Why non-heme Mn complexes of amino 2-quinolylmethyl ligands are inactive in oxidation catalysis? An insight from X-ray data

In the last decade, manganese complexes with bis-amino-bis-pyridylmethyl and structurally related N4 donor ligands have emerged as efficient catalysts of selective epoxidations and C-H oxidations of organic substrates with H2O2. Although a plethora of various ligand structures have been designed, (quinolin-2-yl)methyl moieties have not been involved in constructing such catalysts. Herewith we report crystal structures of several Mn complexes with (quinolin-2-yl)methyl and discuss possible reasons of their inactivity in oxidation catalysis.