CeCl₃-N-Hydroxyphthalimide Complex as Semi-Heterogeneous Photocatalyst for Selective Oxidation of Toluene to Benzaldehyde.

Authors

Ziqi Dong, Feng Niu, Zeqi Wu, Xiaofan Zhou, Junyan Li, Dilshod Nematov, Saidjafar Murodzoda, Huaizhou Jin, Da Chen

Published in

Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany). Pages e75463. Aug 28, 2026. Epub Aug 28, 2026.

Abstract

The activation of inert C(sp³)-H bonds is the rate-determining step in photocatalytic selective oxidation of toluene, and the easy over-oxidation of target products makes it a great challenge in green organic synthesis. Herein, we report a semi-heterogeneous CeCl_x-NHPI complex, which is constructed via the coordination of CeCl₃ and N-Hydroxyphthalimide (NHPI) for the efficient visible-light-driven selective oxidation of toluene to benzaldehyde under ambient conditions. Impressively, the catalyst achieved a maximum benzaldehyde formation rate of up to 2 mmol·g^-1·h^-1 in 5 h, with a benzaldehyde selectivity of 80.6%. Mechanistic studies show that the chlorine radicals (Cl·) generated from the coordinated Ce─Cl bond via the ligand-to-metal charge transfer (LMCT) process, and the phthalimide-N-oxyl (PINO) radicals formed from NHPI via single-electron transfer jointly promote the efficient activation of the inert C(sp³)-H bond in toluene. In addition, the CeCl_x-NHPI complex exhibits good recyclability and broad substrate tolerance for the selective oxidation of various toluene derivatives. This work provides a novel strategy for the design of efficient rare earth-based semi-heterogeneous photocatalysts for the activation of C(sp³)-H bonds.

PMID:
42665971
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 29 Aug 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.