Rational Construction of an Artificial Binuclear Copper Monooxygenase in a Metal–Organic Framework

Artificial enzymatic systems are extensively studied to mimic the structures and functions of their natural counterparts. However, there remains a significant gap between structural modeling and catalytic activity in these artificial systems. Herein we report a novel strategy for the construction of an artificial binuclear copper monooxygenase starting from a Ti metal–organic framework (MOF). The deprotonation of the hydroxide groups on the secondary building units (SBUs) of MIL-125(Ti) (MIL = Matériaux de l’Institut Lavoisier) allows for the metalation of the SBUs with closely spaced CuI pairs, which are oxidized by molecular O2 to afford the CuII2(μ2-OH)2 cofactor in the MOF-based artificial binuclear monooxygenase Ti8-Cu2. An artificial mononuclear Cu monooxygenase Ti8-Cu1 was also prepared for comparison. The MOF-based monooxygenases were characterized by a combination of thermogravimetric analysis, inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, and UV–vis spectroscopy. In the presence of coreductants, Ti8-Cu2 exhibited outstanding catalytic activity toward a wide range of monooxygenation processes, including epoxidation, hydroxylation, Baeyer–Villiger oxidation, and sulfoxidation, with turnover numbers of up to 3450. Ti8-Cu2 showed a turnover frequency at least 17 times higher than that of Ti8-Cu1. Density functional theory calculations revealed O2 activation as the rate-limiting step in the monooxygenation processes. Computational studies further showed that the Cu2 sites in Ti8-Cu2 cooperatively stabilized the Cu–O2 adduct for O–O bond cleavage with 6.6 kcal/mol smaller free energy increase than that of the mononuclear Cu sites in Ti8-Cu1, accounting for the significantly higher catalytic activity of Ti8-Cu2 over Ti8-Cu1.