September 2007   (Technical report   )

Keto-Enol Driven Assembly of Methyl Pyruvate on Pt(111). J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007, 129, 11688.

Stephane Lavoie, Marc-Andre Laliberte, Gautier Mahieu, Vincent Demers-Carpentier, Peter McBreen

Methyl pyruvate undergoes CH bond scission on Pt(111) at room temperature to trigger surface-mediated enol formation and subsequent self-assembly into enol superstructures. This process may be inhibited by performing the experiment below the temperature for CH bond scission or, at room temperature, by using a background pressure of H2. Superstructure formation is not due to a polymerization reaction. Hence, it is unlikely that rate enhancement of the enantioselective hydrogenation of methyl pyruvate on cinchona-modified Pt catalysts is simply due to the absence of a substrate polymerization reaction under reaction conditions.

 J._Am._Chem._Soc._2007.jpg 

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja072638h