Project description
Gaining fundamental insight into nickel catalysis
While catalysis is omnipresent in academic and industrial chemistry, advancements usually rely on accidental discoveries or elaborate screening efforts. High-throughput screening is a powerful method to generate a wealth of chemical information. Nevertheless, fundamental insight is crucial in developing innovative approaches to meet the high demand for predictable, selective and sustainable processes. However, insight-driven developments are still rare due to the complexity of catalytic processes. The ERC-funded FunCatDesign project will focus on the most significant challenges in nickel catalysis, a promising area concerning sustainability and synthetic diversity. The project will tackle challenges related to nickel-catalysed C-H activation, cross-coupling and trifluoromethylation reactions, and the exploration of innovative pathways in catalysis at multinuclear sites.
Objective
Catalysis is ubiquitous in modern academic and industrial chemistry as well as an integral and indispensable discipline that may contribute to solutions of current global challenges. While the field has grown significantly over the past few decades, with numerous transformations that were previously unthinkable now being possible, progress has frequently relied on serendipitous discoveries or elaborate screening efforts. Although it is indisputable that high-throughput screening is an extremely lucrative approach to generate a wealth of chemical information, the next frontier in the development of innovative approaches to meet the high demand for predictable, selective and sustainable processes will likely arise from fundamental insight. However, owing to the complexity of catalytic processes, the fleeting and frequently highly sensitive nature of intermediates and the associated challenges in gaining fundamental mechanistic understanding, insight-driven developments and especially reactivity designs have so far been extremely rare. The objective of this proposal is to capitalize on the tools of experimental and computational chemistry as a powerful means to gain access to the fundamental mechanistic details of key catalytic steps that are required to allow reactivity design. The specific subject for study will focus on the most significant challenges in nickel-catalysis - a highly promising area in the context of sustainability and synthetic diversity owing to nickel’s relatively large abundance and also high reactivities towards relatively inert bonds. The proposed studies will address challenges in relation to Ni-catalyzed C-H activation, cross-coupling and trifluoromethylation reactions, as well as the exploration of novel avenues in catalysis at multinuclear sites.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrytransition metals
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistryhydrocarbons
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencescomputational science
- natural scienceschemical sciencescatalysis
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistryamines
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Programme(s)
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-STG - Starting GrantHost institution
52062 Aachen
Germany