Biomimetic Design of a 3 D Transition Metal/Carbon Dyad for the One-Step Hydrodeoxygenation of Vanillin.

Enzyme catalysts always show an excellent catalytic selectivity, which is important in biochemistry, especially in catalytic synthesis and biopharming. This selectivity is achieved by combining the binding effect induced by the electrostatic effect of the enzyme to attract a specific substrate and then the prearrangement of the substrates inside the enzyme pocket. Herein, we report a proof-of-concept application of an interfacial electrostatic field induced by constructing Schottky heterojunctions to mimic the electrostatic catalysis of an enzyme. In combination with the 3 D structure, a transition metal/carbon dyad was designed by nanoconfinement methods to promote the differential binding effect and the space-induced organization of the reaction intermediate (vanillyl alcohol) to develop a new one-step hydrogenolysis of vanillin for the production of 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol with a remarkably high selectivity (>99 %).