Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-05-27

Nature Inspired Transition Metal Catalysis

Objective

The development of new approaches in transition metal catalysis is of utmost importance since it provides the future tools required to arrive at a sustainable society. Interestingly, the field of transition metal catalysis has been dominated by the relatively simple dogma that the activity and the selectivity of the catalyst is determined by the interplay between the metal and the ligands that are coordinated to the metal. By developing new ligands, new catalyst can be uncovered that display specific reactivity and selectivity. Nature on the other hand, uses a much larger tool-box to arrive at catalytic systems that are generally far more active and selective than the man-made catalysts. Enzymes often use multimetallic sites, or multi functional groups that work in concert. Importantly, Enzymes are much larger than synthetic catalysts, and take advantage of the second sphere around an active site by 1) creating a sterically constrained cavity around it leading to entatic states, i.e. deformed intermediate states that lead to lower energy barriers to the product 2) positioning functional groups within the cavity to properly orient and activate the substrate, by lower the transition state via secondary interactions.
In the current proposal we control catalyst properties by encapsulation. Will will use isolated natural active sites (and models theirof) and install these in well-defined cavities and study their properties. Can we create a second coordination sphere such that we can get activities and selectivies similar to that of the original enzyme? For example, we aim for nitrogenase activity by putting isolated active sites in synthetic cages.

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. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

ERC-2013-ADG
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-AG - ERC Advanced Grant

Host institution

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
EU contribution
€ 2 500 000,00
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Beneficiaries (1)

My booklet 0 0