Selective Alcohol Oxidation by a Copper TEMPO Catalyst: Mechanistic Insights by Simultaneously Coupled Operando EPR/UV-Vis/ATR-IR Spectroscopy.

The first coupled operando EPR/UV-Vis/ATR-IR spectroscopy setup for mechanistic studies of gas-liquid phase reactions is presented and exemplarily applied to the well-known copper/TEMPO-catalyzed (TEMPO=(2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidin-1-yl)oxyl) oxidation of benzyl alcohol. In contrast to previous proposals, no direct redox reaction between TEMPO and Cu(I) /Cu(II) has been detected. Instead, the role of TEMPO is postulated to be the stabilization of a (bpy)(NMI)Cu(II) -O2 (⋅-) -TEMPO (bpy=2,2'-bipyridine, NMI=N-methylimidazole) intermediate formed by electron transfer from Cu(I) to molecular O2 .