Silicon Nitride Surface Enabled Propane Dehydrogenation Catalyzed by Supported Organozirconium

Mesoporous silicon nitride (Si₃N₄) is a nontraditional support for the chemisorption of organometallic complexes with the potential for enhancing catalytic activity through features such as the increased Lewis basicity of nitrogen for heterolytic bond activation, increased ligand donor strength, and metal-ligand orbital overlap. Here, tetrabenzyl zirconium (ZrBn₄) was chemisorbed on Si₃N₄, and the resulting supported organometallic species was characterized by Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy (DRIFTS), Dynamic Nuclear Polarization-enhanced Solid State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (DNP-SSNMR), and X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS). Based on the hypothesis that the nitride might enable facile heterolytic C-H bond activation along the Zr-N bond, this material was found to be a highly active (1.53 mol_propene mol_Zr^-1 h^-1 at 450 °C) and selective (99% to propylene) catalyst for propane dehydrogenation. In contrast, the homologous silica supported complex exhibited negligible activity under these conditions.