Experimental Evidence Supporting Related Mechanisms for Ru(II)-Catalyzed Dehydrocoupling and Hydrolysis of Amine-Boranes

A family of ruthenium­(II) half-sandwich complexes was tested for the hydrolytic decomposition of amine-boranes. The analysis of the catalytic results, together with a multilateral approach based on 1H, 11B NMR, and ESI-MS were used to propose a plausible and conceptually unified mechanism for both the hydrolysis and competitive dehydrogenation of amine-boranes. We propose the intermediacy of solvent-stabilized borenium cations during the catalytic cycle, evolving toward dehydrogenation products in distilled THF or releasing amine-hydroxyboranes in aqueous media. Both reaction pathways would liberate up to 1 equivalent of hydrogen through a metal-catalyzed process, but an out-of-cycle low-barrier hydrolysis of amine-hydroxyboranes would produce the 2 additional equivalents of hydrogen in aqueous solutions. Metal-catalyzed deuteration of (non hydrogen-productive) trisubstituted amine-boranes by using D2O as deuterium source was observed, and included as part of the mechanism proposal.