Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Characterization of Dioxygen-Bridged Cobalt Dimers with Relevance to Water Oxidation

A variety of metal oxides can catalyze the oxidation of water to molecular oxygen when polarized by a sufficiently high electrochemical potential. Minimizing the overpotential and increasing the rate of the oxygen-evolving reaction (OER) are key goals in making such materials a component of viable energy storage devices. However, the structural factors that imbue the metal oxides with their catalytic power are difficult to assess as these solids contain many distinct metal-ion sites, have a varying amount of defect sites within the lattice, and can be composed of multiple phases. In the present study, we determined the magnetic properties for a series of dimeric cobalt complexes in which the two metal centers are bridged by a dioxygen moiety. Our spectroscopically validated electronic structure description indicates that each species is best described as two Co(III) ions that are bound to a μ–η1η1 superoxide ligand. Intriguingly, we found evidence that the two compounds that possess oxygen-evolving activi...