Tuning the Catalytic Properties of UiO-66 Metal-Organic Frameworks: From Lewis to Defect-Induced Bronsted Acidity

[EN] The Lewis/Bronsted acidity and catalytic properties of UiO-66-type metal-organic frameworks are studied in the context of tunable acid catalysts based on the presence of linker defects that create coordinatively unsaturated Zr4+ centers. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy of adsorbed CO and direct pH measurements are employed to characterize hydrated and dehydrated UiO-66 containing different number of Zr4+ sites associated with defects. These sites can strongly polarize coordinated water molecules, which induces Bronsted acidity in the hydrated material. Upon dehydration of the solid, the coordinated water molecules are removed, and the underlying coordinatively unsaturated Zr4+ cations become exposed and available as Lewis acid sites. Herein we show, for various acid-catalyzed reactions, how it is possible to shift from a Bronsted acid to a Lewis acid catalyst by simply controlling the hydration degree of the solid. This control adds a new dimension to the design and engineering of MOFs for catalytic applicationsFinancial support by the Spanish Government is acknowledged through projects MAT2017-82288-C2-1-P and the Severo Ochoa program (SEV-2016-0683)Cirujano, FG.; Llabrés I Xamena, FX. (2020). Tuning the Catalytic Properties of UiO-66 Metal-Organic Frameworks: From Lewis to Defect-Induced Bronsted Acidity. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. 11(12):4879-4890. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c00984S48794890111

Regional Genetic Structure in the Aquatic Macrophyte Ruppia cirrhosa Suggests Dispersal by Waterbirds

The evolutionary history of the genus Ruppia has been shaped by hybridization, polyploidisation and vicariance that have resulted in a problematic taxonomy. Recent studies provided insight into species circumscription, organelle takeover by hybridization, and revealed the importance of verifying species identification to avoid distorting effects of mixing different species, when estimating population connectivity. In the present study, we use microsatellite markers to determine population diversity and connectivity patterns in Ruppia cirrhosa including two spatial scales: (1) from the Atlantic Iberian coastline in Portugal to the Siculo-Tunisian Strait in Sicily and (2) within the Iberian Peninsula comprising the Atlantic-Mediterranean transition. The higher diversity in the Mediterranean Sea suggests that populations have had longer persistence there, suggesting a possible origin and/or refugial area for the species. The high genotypic diversities highlight the importance of sexual reproduction for survival and maintenance of populations. Results revealed a regional population structure matching a continent-island model, with strong genetic isolation and low gene flow between populations. This population structure could be maintained by waterbirds, acting as occasional dispersal vectors. This information elucidates ecological strategies of brackish plant species in coastal lagoons, suggesting mechanisms used by this species to colonize new isolated habitats and dominate brackish aquatic macrophyte systems, yet maintaining strong genetic structure suggestive of very low dispersal.Fundacao para a Cincia e Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) [PTDC/MAR/119363/2010, BIODIVERSA/0004/2015, UID/Multi/04326/2013]Pew FoundationSENECA FoundationMurcia Government, Spain [11881/PI/09]FCT Investigator Programme-Career Development [IF/00998/2014]Spanish Ministry of Education [AP2008-01209]European Community [00399/2012]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

MOFs as multifunctional catalysts: One-pot synthesis of menthol from citronellal over a bifunctional MIL-101 catalyst

A bifunctional MOF catalyst containing coordinatively unsaturated Cr3+ sites and palladium nanoparticles (Pd@MIL-101) has been used for the cyclization of citronellal to isopulegol and for the one-pot tandem isomerization/hydrogenation of citronellal to menthol. The MOF was found to be stable under the reaction conditions used, and the results obtained indicate that the performance of this bifunctional solid catalyst is comparable with other state-of-the-art materials for the tandem reaction: Full citronellal conversion was attained over Pd@MIL-101 in 18 h, with 86% selectivity to menthols and a diastereoselectivity of 81% to the desired (-)-menthol, while up to 30 h were necessary for attaining similar values over Ir/H-beta under analogous reaction conditions.Financial support by Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia e Innovacion (Project MIYCIN, CSD2009-00050; PROGRAMA CONSOLIDER. INGENIO 2009), Generalidad Valenciana (GV PROMETEO/2008/130) and the CSIC (Proyectos Intramurales Especiales 201080I020) is gratefully acknowledged.García Cirujano, F.; Llabrés I Xamena, FX.; Corma Canós, A. (2012). MOFs as multifunctional catalysts: One-pot synthesis of menthol from citronellal over a bifunctional MIL-101 catalyst. Dalton Transactions. 41:4249-4254. https://doi.org/10.1039/c2dt12480gS4249425441Corma, A., García, H., & Llabrés i Xamena, F. X. (2010). Engineering Metal Organic Frameworks for Heterogeneous Catalysis. Chemical Reviews, 110(8), 4606-4655. doi:10.1021/cr9003924Farrusseng, D., Aguado, S., & Pinel, C. (2009). Metal-Organic Frameworks: Opportunities for Catalysis. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 48(41), 7502-7513. doi:10.1002/anie.200806063Lee, J., Farha, O. K., Roberts, J., Scheidt, K. A., Nguyen, S. T., & Hupp, J. T. (2009). Metal–organic framework materials as catalysts. 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Chemical Communications, (35), 4192. doi:10.1039/b718371bVermoortele, F., Ameloot, R., Vimont, A., Serre, C., & De Vos, D. (2011). An amino-modified Zr-terephthalate metal–organic framework as an acid–base catalyst for cross-aldol condensation. Chem. Commun., 47(5), 1521-1523. doi:10.1039/c0cc03038dWu, P., Wang, J., Li, Y., He, C., Xie, Z., & Duan, C. (2011). Luminescent Sensing and Catalytic Performances of a Multifunctional Lanthanide-Organic Framework Comprising a Triphenylamine Moiety. Advanced Functional Materials, 21(14), 2788-2794. doi:10.1002/adfm.201100115Pan, Y., Yuan, B., Li, Y., & He, D. (2010). Multifunctional catalysis by Pd@MIL-101: one-step synthesis of methyl isobutyl ketone over palladium nanoparticles deposited on a metal–organic framework. Chemical Communications, 46(13), 2280. doi:10.1039/b922061eCliment, M. J., Corma, A., Guil-López, R., Iborra, S., & Primo, J. (1998). Use of Mesoporous MCM-41 Aluminosilicates as Catalysts in the Preparation of Fine Chemicals. Journal of Catalysis, 175(1), 70-79. doi:10.1006/jcat.1998.1970Climent, M. J., Corma, A., Iborra, S., & Velty, A. (2002). Designing the adequate base solid catalyst with Lewis or Bronsted basic sites or with acid–base pairs. Journal of Molecular Catalysis A: Chemical, 182-183, 327-342. doi:10.1016/s1381-1169(01)00501-5Boronat, M., Climent, M. J., Corma, A., Iborra, S., Montón, R., & Sabater, M. J. (2010). Bifunctional Acid-Base Ionic Liquid Organocatalysts with a Controlled Distance Between Acid and Base Sites. Chemistry - A European Journal, 16(4), 1221-1231. doi:10.1002/chem.200901519Corma, A., Díaz, U., García, T., Sastre, G., & Velty, A. (2010). Multifunctional Hybrid Organic−Inorganic Catalytic Materials with a Hierarchical System of Well-Defined Micro- and Mesopores. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 132(42), 15011-15021. doi:10.1021/ja106272zFerey, G. (2005). A Chromium Terephthalate-Based Solid with Unusually Large Pore Volumes and Surface Area. Science, 309(5743), 2040-2042. doi:10.1126/science.1116275Corma, A., & Renz, M. (2004). Sn-Beta zeolite as diastereoselective water-resistant heterogeneous Lewis-acid catalyst for carbon–carbon bond formation in the intramolecular carbonyl–ene reaction. Chem. Commun., (5), 550-551. doi:10.1039/b313738dIosif, F., Coman, S., Pârvulescu, V., Grange, P., Delsarte, S., Vos, D. D., & Jacobs, P. (2004). Ir-Beta zeolite as a heterogeneous catalyst for the one-pot transformation of citronellal to menthol. Chem. Commun., (11), 1292-1293. doi:10.1039/b403692aNeaţu, F., Coman, S., Pârvulescu, V. I., Poncelet, G., De Vos, D., & Jacobs, P. (2009). Heterogeneous Catalytic Transformation of Citronellal to Menthol in a Single Step on Ir-Beta Zeolite Catalysts. Topics in Catalysis, 52(9), 1292-1300. doi:10.1007/s11244-009-9270-9MERTENS, P., VERPOORT, F., PARVULESCU, A., & DEVOS, D. (2006). Pt/H-beta zeolites as productive bifunctional catalysts for the one-step citronellal-to-menthol conversion. 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The Rise and Fall of "Respectable" Spanish Liberalism, 1808-1923: An Explanatory Framework

The article focuses on the reasons behind both the consolidation of what I have termed “respectable” liberalism between the 1830s and the 1840s and its subsequent decline and fall between 1900 and 1923. In understanding both processes I study the links established between “respectable” liberals and propertied elites, the monarchy, and the Church. In the first phase these links served to consolidate the liberal polity. However, they also meant that many tenets of liberal ideology were compromised. Free elections were undermined by the operation of caciquismo, monarchs established a powerful position, and despite the Church hierarchy working with liberalism, the doctrine espoused by much of the Church was still shaped by the Counter-Reformation. Hence, “respectable” liberalism failed to achieve a popular social base. And the liberal order was increasingly denigrated as part of the corrupt “oligarchy” that ruled Spain. Worse still, between 1916 and 1923 the Church, monarch, and the propertied elite increasingly abandoned the liberal Monarchist Restoration. Hence when General Primo de Rivera launched his coup the rug was pulled from under the liberals’ feet and there was no one to cushion the fall

Quantifying unpredictability: A multiple-model approach based on satellite imagery data from Mediterranean ponds.

Fluctuations in environmental parameters are increasingly being recognized as essential features of any habitat. The quantification of whether environmental fluctuations are prevalently predictable or unpredictable is remarkably relevant to understanding the evolutionary responses of organisms. However, when characterizing the relevant features of natural habitats, ecologists typically face two problems: (1) gathering long-term data and (2) handling the hard-won data. This paper takes advantage of the free access to long-term recordings of remote sensing data (27 years, Landsat TM/ETM+) to assess a set of environmental models for estimating environmental predictability. The case study included 20 Mediterranean saline ponds and lakes, and the focal variable was the water-surface area. This study first aimed to produce a method for accurately estimating the water-surface area from satellite images. Saline ponds can develop salt-crusted areas that make it difficult to distinguish between soil and water. This challenge was addressed using a novel pipeline that combines band ratio water indices and the short near-infrared band as a salt filter. The study then extracted the predictable and unpredictable components of variation in the water-surface area. Two different approaches, each showing variations in the parameters, were used to obtain the stochastic variation around a regular pattern with the objective of dissecting the effect of assumptions on predictability estimations. The first approach, which is based on Colwell's predictability metrics, transforms the focal variable into a nominal one. The resulting discrete categories define the relevant variations in the water-surface area. In the second approach, we introduced General Additive Model (GAM) fitting as a new metric for quantifying predictability. Both approaches produced a wide range of predictability for the studied ponds. Some model assumptions-which are considered very different a priori-had minor effects, whereas others produced predictability estimations that showed some degree of divergence. We hypothesize that these diverging estimations of predictability reflect the effect of fluctuations on different types of organisms. The fluctuation analysis described in this manuscript is applicable to a wide variety of systems, including both aquatic and nonaquatic systems, and will be valuable for quantifying and characterizing predictability, which is essential within the expected global increase in the unpredictability of environmental fluctuations. We advocate that a priori information for organisms of interest should be used to select the most suitable metrics estimating predictability, and we provide some guidelines for this approach

One‐Step Chemo‐, Regio‐ and Stereoselective Reduction of Ketosteroids to Hydroxysteroids over Zr‐Containing MOF‐808 Metal‐Organic Frameworks

[EN] Zr-containing MOF-808 is a very promising heterogeneous catalyst for the selective reduction of ketosteroids to the corresponding hydroxysteroids through a Meerwein-Ponndorf-Verley (MPV) reaction. Interestingly, the process leads to the diastereoselective synthesis of elusive 17 alpha-hydroxy derivatives in one step, whereas most chemical and biological transformations produce the 17 beta-OH compounds, or they require several additional steps to convert 17 beta-OH into 17 alpha-OH by inverting the configuration of the 17 center. Moreover, MOF-808 is found to be stable and reusable; it is also chemoselective (only keto groups are reduced, even in the presence of other reducible groups such as C=C bonds) and regioselective (in 3,17-diketosteroids only the keto group in position 17 is reduced, while the 3-keto group remains almost intact). The kinetic rate constant and thermodynamic parameters of estrone reduction to estradiol have been obtained by a detailed temperature-dependent kinetic analysis. The results evidence a major contribution of the entropic term, thus suggesting that the diastereoselectivity of the process is controlled by the confinement of the reaction inside the MOF cavities, where the Zr4+ active sites are located.Financial support by the Spanish Government is acknowledged through projects MAT2017-82288-C2-1-P and the Severo Ochoa program (SEV-2016-0683). The Microscopy Service of the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia is gratefully acknowledged for the electron microscopy images.Mautschke, H.; Llabrés I Xamena, FX. (2021). One-Step Chemo-, Regio- and Stereoselective Reduction of Ketosteroids to Hydroxysteroids over Zr-Containing MOF-808 Metal-Organic Frameworks. Chemistry - A European Journal. 27(41):10766-10775. https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.2021009671076610775274