Abstract
On-surface synthesis has prompted much interest in recent years because it provides an alternative strategy for controlling chemical reactions and allows for the direct observation of reaction pathways. Herein, we combined scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory to provide extensive evidence for the conversion of alkoxybenzene-containing ethers into alcohols by means of surface synthesis. The reported dealkylation reactions are finely controlled by the annealing parameters, which govern the onset of successive alkyl chains dissociations. Moreover, density functional theory calculations elucidate the details of the reaction pathways, showing that dealkylation reactions are surface-assisted and very different from their homogeneous analogues in solution.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 9881-9885 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Angewandte Chemie - International Edition |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue number | 34 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 16 2016 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
We thank Prof. D. H. Yan and Prof. H. B. Wang for the help in XPS measurements. We acknowledge Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science & Technology, the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions. This work was supported by the NSFC (Nos. 91227201, 91545127, 21403149), Major State Basic Research Development Program of China (No. 2014CB932600), and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Nos. BK20140305 and BK20150305). Work at RPI was supported by the US Office of Naval Research. Calculations were partially performed on Rensselaer Center for Computational Innovations.
Keywords
- dealkylation
- density functional theory
- on-surface reactions
- scanning tunneling microscopy
- surface chemistry