Decavanadate-based clusters as bifunctional catalysts for efficient treatment of carbon dioxide and simulant sulfur mustard

Abstract Reutilization of carbon dioxide (CO2) and destruction of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) at ambient conditions are deemed as two of the crucial challenges to steer toward a more sustainable future because they can cause great hazard to human beings and environment. Design of stable, selective and powerful catalysts for multi-functional catalysis is highly desirable yet largely unmet. In this work, a series of novel decavanadate-based transition metal clusters (POVs-TM, compounds 1–5) have been reported. Compounds 1–5 possess decavanadate-centered structures in which one decavanadate cluster bridged two bridged or free transition metal units. Decavanadate unit, serving as redox center can construct bifunctional catalysis platform with transition metal. Thus-obtained clusters can serve as powerful bifunctional catalysts in both cycloaddition of CO2 and degradation of sulfur mustard simulant. Specially, compound 1 presented high performance (conv. up to 99.4 %, sele. up to 99.5 %) in chemical fixation of CO2 into valuable cyclic carbonates with simulated flue gas as the gas resource. Besides, compound 3 performed superior efficiency (conv. 98.9 %, sele. 98.7 %) than other catalysts in the degradation of sulfur mustard simulant under ambient conditions. These dual-function validated POVs-TM clusters hold much promise in the exploration of novel catalysts for applications like continuous catalytic or flow bed reactions.