Selective synthesis of Rh5 carbonyl clusters within a polyamine dendrimer for chemoselective reduction of nitro aromatics.

The selective synthesis of the [Rh5(CO)15](-) cluster within the PPI dendrimer was successfully demonstrated. The dendrimer-encapsulated [Rh5(CO)15](-) was resistant to decomposition under the catalytic reaction conditions and exhibited extremely high selectivity for the chemoselective reduction of nitro groups of various nitro aromatics with other reducible groups using CO/H2O as a reductant.