Synthesis, Characterization, and Reactivity of Putative High-Valent Nickel-Oxo Species

Terminal metal-oxo species are important intermediates in many biological systems such as the mononuclear non-heme iron oxygenases that utilize Fe(IV)-oxo intermediates to initiate oxidative transformations. The formation of a stable high-valent metal-oxo complex for late-transition metals is challenging synthetically and terminal metal-oxo ligands for metals in groups nine through twelve are rare. In this work, we synthesized a mononuclear Nickel complex through different oxidation states of +2, +3, and +4 supported by a dianionic, tridentate ligand. We produced a putative Ni(IV) complex by a single sequence reaction between Ni(III)OH and an oxidant, ceric ammonium nitrate (CAN). The reactivity of this proposed Ni (IV) complex is still under investigation as we move to determine the structure and the characterization of the complex. Our ongoing efforts aim to determine the C-H bond functionalization of the Ni(IV) complex