On the Mechanisms of Hydrogen-Atom Transfer from Water to the Heteronuclear Oxide Cluster [Ga2 Mg2 O5 ](.+) : Remarkable Electronic Structure Effects.
Mechanistic insight into the homolytic cleavage of the O-H bond of water by the heteronuclear oxide cluster [Ga2 Mg2 O5 ](.+) has been derived from state-of-the-art gas-phase experiments in conjunction with quantum chemical calculations. Three pathways have been identified computationally. In addition to the conventional hydrogen-atom transfer (HAT) to the radical center of a bridging oxygen atom, two mechanistically distinct proton-coupled electron-transfer (PCET) processes have been identified. The energetically most favored path involves initial coordination of the incoming water ligand to a magnesium atom followed by an intramolecular proton transfer to the lone-pair of the bridging oxygen atom. This step, which is accomplished by an electronic reorganization, generates two structurally equivalent OH groups either of which can be liberated, in agreement with labeling experiments.
Institut für Chemie, Technische Universität Berlin, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin (Germany).|Institute of Theoretical Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130023 (P.R. China).
Jilai
J
Li
Institut für Chemie, Technische Universität Berlin, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin (Germany).
Shaodong
S
Zhou
Institut für Chemie, Technische Universität Berlin, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin (Germany).
Xiao-Nan
XN
Wu
Institut für Chemie, Technische Universität Berlin, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin (Germany).
Shiya
S
Tang
Institut für Chemie, Technische Universität Berlin, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin (Germany).
Maria
M
Schlangen
Institut für Chemie, Technische Universität Berlin, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin (Germany). Helmut.Schwarz@tu-berlin.de.
Helmut
H
Schwarz
OH bond cleavage; computational chemistry; gas-phase reactions; mass spectrometry; radicals