Biuret—A Crucial Reaction Intermediate for Understanding Urea Pyrolysis to Form Carbon Nitrides: Crystal‐Structure Elucidati
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Full Paper Chemistry—A European Journal doi.org/10.1002/chem.202001396 & Structure Elucidation |Hot Paper| Biuret—A Crucial Reaction Intermediate for Understanding Urea Pyrolysis To Form Carbon Nitrides:Crystal-Structure Elucidation and In Situ Diffractometric, Vibrational and Thermal Characterisation Peter Gross and Henning A. Hçppe*[a] Abstract: The crystal structure of biuret was elucidated by mass reveal that the concentration of reactive gases at the means of XRD analysisofsingle crystalsgrown through slow interfacetothe condensed sample residues is acrucial pa- evaporation from asolution in ethanol. It crystallises in its rameter for the prevailing decompositionpathway.Taking own structure type in space group C2/c (a =15.4135(8) , these findings into consideration, astudy on the optimisa- b=6.6042(3) , c=9.3055(4) , Z =8). Biuret decomposition tion of carbon nitride synthesis from urea on the gram scale, was studied in situ by means of temperature-programmed with standard solid-state laboratory techniques, is presented. powder XRD and FTIR spectroscopy,toidentify aco-crystal- Finally,aserendipitously encountered self-coating of the cru- line biuret–cyanuric acidphase as apreviously unrecognised cible inner walls by graphite during repeatedsynthetic reaction intermediate. Extensive thermogravimetric studies cycles, which prove to be highly beneficial for the obtained of varying cruciblegeometry,heatingrate and initial sample yields,isreported. Introduction from diesel engines,[10] and by materials scientists, on the other hand,[11] due to the recent discovery[12] of urea as precursor to [13] Despite its simple constitution,urea(NH2C(O)NH2)has kept sci- carbon nitride materials. As often happens, one man’s meat entists of various disciplines busy over the last four centuries.[1] is another man’s poison: although solid by-products of urea Its exploration has triggered some of the most pivotaldiscus- pyrolysis are one of many challenges for the implementation sions in the historyofscience, including Prout’s hypothesis,[2] of mobile SCR technologies,[14,15] the sum of which were apar- the Vitalism debate[3] or the theory of metabolic cycles,[4] many tial motivation for what, in 2015, came to light as the so-called of which revolve around the nature of urea formation/degrada- dieselemissions scandals,[16] carbon nitrides are heavily re- tion. In particular,the presumably simple, dry and uncatalysed searched as potentialsuperhard materials,[17] novel semicon- pyrolysis of urea “largelyremains amystery and achallenge to ductors,[18] luminescent materials,[19,20] catalysts and catalyst investigators”,[5] to date. In addition to these persisting funda- substrates,[21] materials for photocatalytic water splitting[22] and mental questionsofmolecular chemistry,renewed exploration because of fundamentalquestionsofstructural chemistry.[23–25] of this topic in recent years has been driven by engineers and Therefore, abetter understanding of urea pyrolysis remains a catalysis chemists, on one hand,[6–9] due to the increasing use crucial challenge for scientists from ahuge variety of disci- of urea as areductant for the selective catalytic reduction plines. (SCR) of nitrous oxidesinthe after-treatment of exhaust gases To shine some light onto urea pyrolysis, many thermogravi- metric and calorimetric studies have been conducted, often in combination with the analysisofevolved gases and/or pyroly- [a] P. Gross, Prof. Dr.H.A.Hçppe Lehrstuhl fürFestkçrperchemie, UniversitätAugsburg sis residues by meansofvibrational spectroscopy,mass spec- Universitätsstr.1,86159 Augsburg (Germany) trometry or chromatography,aswell as thermochemical mod- E-mail:[email protected] elling of the decompositionreaction.[7,26–40] Severalstudies ex- Homepage:https://www.ak-hoeppe.de plicitly reveal the distinct influence of pyrolysis parameters, Supporting information and the ORCID identification number(s) for the au- such as heating rate, initial sample mass and crucible shape on thor(s) of this article can be found under: https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.202001396.Itcontains further figuresillustrat- decomposition temperature,total mass loss and pyrolysis resi- ing powder diffractionpatterns, XPS spectra, as well as FTIR spectra and dues formed.[5,9, 41,42] Thismight be traced back to the complex tables comparing vibrational frequencies. mix of different reaction products and intermediates during 2020 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH GmbH. This is an open access urea pyrolysis (the specific compositionisdetermined by the article under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial exact pyrolysis parameters), many of which can furtherreact License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial with each other to form different intermediates. Among them, purposes. ammonia,cyanic acid, carbon dioxide, water,biuret Chem. Eur.J.2020, 26,14366 –14376 14366 2020 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH GmbH Full Paper Chemistry—A European Journal doi.org/10.1002/chem.202001396 (H2NC(O)NHC(O)NH2), triuret (H2N(C(O)NH)2C(O)NH2), cyanuric for complementary structural in situ methods, like diffraction [46] acid (H3[C3N3O3]), ammelide (H2[C3N3O2(NH2)]), ammeline or spectroscopy on the solids”. Astonishingly,todate, nei- (H[C3N3O(NH2)2]), melamine ([C3N3(NH2)3]),melam ther spectroscopic nor diffractometriccharacterisation tech- ([C3N3(NH2)2]NH[C3N3(NH2)2]), melem [C6N7(NH2)3]) and melon niqueshave been used to study the pyrolysis of urea andits ([C6N7(NH2)(NH)]n,the last of which is often somewhat mis- decomposition products in situ. In particular,the absence of named graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4)throughoutthe litera- diffraction studies is striking,especially with regard to the crys- ture,[24] have been found. All of them have been known since tallographic breakthroughs historically achieved with urea and the pioneering works of Berzelius,[43] Liebig[44] and Wçhler,[45] its decomposition products.[47] One reason for the lack of in and all contribute to the complexity of this pyrolysis with their situ probing of urea, althoughthis does not hold for its de- individual kinetics of formation and decomposition in often composition products, might be the complications linked with overlapping temperature regimes. The thermaldecomposition its melting and evaporation,[48] which we have also encoun- path of urea, as generally established in literature, can be tered during our preliminarystudies and that have prevented broken down into the simplified reaction steps given in Equa- us from conducting in situ powder XRD andFTIR measure- tions (1)–(15): mentsofurea. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, no study on the crystal structure of water-free biuret (the simplest T 133 Curea NH OCN m Ð 4ð Þm urea decomposition product already described by Wiedemann 1 [49] NH4 OCN m NH3 g HOCN g ð Þ over 170 years ago )has been published, although the crystal ð Þ ! ð Þ þ ð Þ structures of biurethydrate[50,51] and severalother crystal struc- HNCO [52–57] T 150 Curea þ biuret 2 tures containing biuret molecules have been elucidated. m ! ð Þ We therefore decided to contributeour attempt to solve this T 160 Cbiuret uream HOCN g 3 ! þ ð Þ ð Þ ongoing interdisciplinary chemical conundrum by reporting on our structuraland vibrational characterisationofbiuret, as well T 160 C3HNCO cyanuric acid 4 ! ð Þ as in situ powder XRD andFTIR measurements during its ther- HNCO mal decomposition. Furthermore, we present acomprehensive T 160 Cbiuret þ triuret 5 ! ð Þ thermogravimetric study on biuret, varying heatingrate, initial HNCO T 160 Cbiuret þ cyanuricacid 6 mass, crucibleform andatmosphere over alarge parameter NH!3 ð Þ À range.Finally,weput all lessons learnedinto use by optimising 2HNCO T 160 Curea þ ammelide 7 H O the yield of agram-scale synthesis of melon directly from urea. À 2 ! ð Þ T 190 Ctriuret cyanuricacid 8 NH À !3 ð Þ HNCO T 190 Cbiuret þ ammelide 9 Results H O À 2! ð Þ Crystalstructure of biuret T 250 Ccyanuricacid 3HNCO 10 ! ð Þ Biuret crystallises in anew structure type in the monoclinic NH3 T 250 Cammelide þ ammeline 11 H O space group C2/c (no. 15) with eight molecules per unit cell, as À 2! ð Þ NH3 depictedinFigure 1. Relevantparameters of the crystal-struc- T 250 Cammeline þ melamine 12 H O À 2! ð Þ ture refinement are given in Table 1. All atoms are situated on general positions. The biuret moiety shows that the trans con- T 350 C2melamine melam 13 NH À !3 ð Þ figuration exclusively is almost perfectly flat (largest torsion T 350 C2melam melem 14 angle:38)and oriented either parallel to (19 7 11)orto(19 7¯ NH3 ð Þ À ! 11). The averaged interatomic distances for C O(1.24 ), C Ni À À T 350 C n melem melon 15 n NH (1.38 ,imide N) and C Na (1.32 ,amide N) correspond very À !3 ð Þ À well to the values found in other biuret-containing crystal It should be noted thatthese reaction steps, as well as the structures and to the sum of the ionic radii (Table 2).[58] The temperature ranges reported throughout the literature, might molecule features one intramolecular hydrogen bond between vary,depending on the theoretical and experimentalmethods one carbonyl and one amide group (O Hdistance:1.92 ), as À and parameters chosen. Only the first two steps, that is, the well as two intermolecular hydrogen bondsbetween amide meltingand evaporation of urea [Eq. (1)],aswell as the subse- and carbonyl groups towards each of the two adjacent, copla- quent formation of biuret [Eq. (2)],are agreedupon in all stud- nar biuret molecules,forming two sets of skew ribbons ubiqui- [39] ies, with afew notableexceptions. The challenge of under- tous in the crystal chemistry of ureas (Figure 1b).[51,59–62] The standing the reactionpathway of urea decompositionmight ribbonswithin aset are stackedantiparallel offset with ainter- therefore be simplified, to acertain degree, to the problem of ribbon distance of about 3.3 ,roughly corresponding to the biuret decomposition. sum of the van der Waals radii of N/O and C.