Ruthenium Removal Using Silica-Supported Aromatic Isocyanides

New silica gel scavengers containing aromatic isocyanides have been synthesized and evaluated for Ru removal. A thiol-ene click reaction was used to attach the isocyanide precursor to a thiol-containing siloxane. Conventional methods for grafting to silica gel at elevated temperature resulted in significant hydrolysis of the isocyanide. A novel cleavage reaction was developed to quantitate the amount of surface-loaded isocyanide. Binding by the new materials was comparatively evaluated for a variety or Ru carbene catalysts. The optimal conditions were extended to two ring-closing metatheses (RCM). The residual Ru was determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). For facile RCM reactions, the UV data agreed with the ICP-MS results. However, more difficult RCM did not correlate well with the UV data. This was interpreted in terms of varying extent of catalyst decomposition. In all cases, isocyanide scavenger reagents were found to be superior to commonly used, silica gel-based metal scavengers.