Heterovalent Metal Pair Sites on Metal–Organic Framework Ordered Macropores for Multimolecular Co-Activation

The precise design of catalytic metal centers with multiple chemical states to facilitate sophisticated reactions involving multimolecular activation is highly desirable but challenging. Herein, we report an ordered macroporous catalyst with heterovalent metal pair (HMP) sites comprising CuII–CuI on the basis of a microporous metal–organic framework (MOF) system. This macroporous HMP catalyst with proximity heterovalent dual copper sites, whose distance is controlled to ∼2.6 Å, on macropore surface exhibits a co-activation behavior of ethanol at CuII and alkyne at CuI, and avoids microporous restriction, thereby promoting additive-free alkyne hydroboration reaction. The desired yield enhances dramatically compared with the pristine MOF and ordered macroporous MOF both with solely isovalent CuII–CuII sites. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the Cu-HMP sites can stabilize the Bpin-CuII–CuI-alkyne intermediate and facilitate C–B bond formation, resulting in a smooth alkyne hydroboration process. This work provides new perspectives to design multimolecular activation catalysts for sophisticated matter transformations.