Insights into heterogeneous phosphodiester hydrolysis using a simple hydrogel-based copper(II)-imidazole catalyst

A family of copolymer hydrogels containing different mass percentages of vinylimidazole, acrylamide and N,N′-methylenebisacrylamide were used to bind copper(II) ions. The resultant copper-loaded gels demonstrated spectroscopic features that indicated copper was bound in a distorted square planar geometry. The hydrolysis activity of these the most active of these systems towards bis(3-nitrophenyl)phosphate at pH 8 was 2.78 × 10⁻⁶ s⁻¹, five orders of magnitude greater than the uncatalyzed reaction. While these systems obey Michaelis-Menten kinetics, they also subject both competitive and non-competitive inhibition from excess substrate and excess hydroxide due to constraints based in the coordination geometry of the copper(II) active sites.