Chemical reactions in dense monolayers: in situ thermal cleavage of grafted esters for preparation of solid surfaces functionalized with carboxylic acids.

The thermodynamics of a chemical reaction confined at a solid surface was investigated through kinetic measurements of a model unimolecular reaction. The thermal cleavage of ester groups grafted at the surface of solid silica was investigated together with complementary physicochemical characterization of the grafted species. The ester molecules were chemically grafted to the silica surface and subsequently cleaved into the carboxylic acids. A grafting process of a reproducible monolayer was designed using the reaction of monofunctional organosilane from its gas phase. The thermal deprotection step of the ester end-group was investigated. The thermal deprotection reaction behaves in quite a specific manner when it is conducted at a surface in a grafted layer. Different organosilane molecules terminated by methyl, isopropyl and tert-butyl ester groups were grafted to silica surface; such functionalized materials were characterized by elemental analysis, IR and NMR spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis, and the thermodynamic parameters of the thermal elimination reaction at the surface were measured. The limiting factor of such thermal ester cleavage reaction is the thermal stability of grafted ester group according to the temperature order: tert-butyl < i-propyl < methyl. Methyl ester groups were not selectively cleaved by temperature. The thermal deprotection of i-propyl ester groups took place at a temperature close to the thermal degradation of the organofunctional tail of the silane. The low thermolysis temperature of the grafted tert-butyl esters allowed their selective cleavage. There is a definite influence of the surface on the reaction. The enthalpy of activation is lower than in the gas phase because of the polarity of the reaction site. The major contribution is entropic; the negative entropy of activation comes from lateral interactions with the neighbor grafted molecules because of the high grafting density. Such reaction is an original strategy to functionalize the silica surface by carboxylic acid groups by means of a simple, reproducible, and efficient process involving in situ thermolysis of ester groups.