Final Report Summary - FRUSTRATED HYDROGEN (Activation of Hydrogen by Organic Frustrated Lewis Pairs. Applications in catalysis)
The metal free activation of hydrogen and the subsequent metal free reduction of organic substrates has attracted the attention of many research groups during the last ten years. At the beginning of this project we focused our work on the activation of hydrogen using only organic Lewis acids and bases. Unfortunately, this early objective could not be achieved. However, in an attempt to modulate the basicity of phosphines we realized that by introduction of cationic groups directly attached to the central P-atom, very strong pi-acceptor properties were induced on the corresponding phosphines. These now called alfa-cationic ligands have demonstrated an exceptional ability to increase the reactivity of Au and Pt catalysts on the cycloisomerization of unsaturated organic substrates. Our catalysts are especially indicated for processes that do not proceed properly using classical ones.