Recyclable -Heterocyclic Carbene Porous Coordination Polymers with Two Distinct Metal Sites for Transformation of CO to Cyclic Carbonates.

Single-component catalysts with integrated multiple reactive centers could work in concert to achieve enhanced activity tailored for specific catalytic reactions, but they remain underdeveloped. Herein, we report the construction of heterogeneous bimetallic porous coordination polymers (PCPs) containing both porphyrin and -heterocyclic carbene (NHC) metal sites via the coordinative assembly of the NHC functionalities. Three heterobimetallic PCPs (, and ) have been prepared to verify this facile synthetic strategy for the first time. In order to establish a cooperative action toward the catalytic CO cycloaddition with epoxides, an additional tetraalkylammonium bromide functionality has also been incorporated into these polymeric structures through the -substituent of the NHC moieties. The resulting heterogeneous bimetallic catalyst exhibits the best catalytic performance in CO cycloaddition with styrene oxide (SO) under solvent-free conditions at atmospheric pressure and is applicable to a wide range of epoxides. More importantly, works smoothly and is recyclable in the absence of a cocatalyst under 1.0 MPa of CO at 60 °C. This indicates that is quite competitive with the reported heterogeneous catalysts, which typically require a high reaction temperature above 100 °C under cocatalyst-free conditions. Thus, this work provides a new approach to design heterogeneous bimetallic PCP catalysts for high-performance CO fixation under mild reaction conditions.