Organic molecules have played a central role in many of the scientific advances that have so dramatically improved our quality of life and life expectancy over the last centuries. It is thus not surprising that a variety of scientific disciplines studies and employs such molecules in multiple contexts from life sciences to engineering. As a consequence, the advance in these research fields is intimately linked to the availability of organic molecules with an ever growing degree of complexity. This implies that basic research towards the synthesis of compounds that would otherwise be challenging or even impossible to prepare bears the potential to stimulate important advances across all those disciplines that require such organic molecules.
In this project, we study the use of a novel class of palladium catalysts, which we have very recently discovered, in order to enable hitherto unprecedented reactivities and selectivities in the palladium catalyzed activation of aromatic C–H bonds. Through this research we expect to enable the synthesis of multiply substituted aromatic compounds with increased efficiency as well as regioselectivity patterns that complement the currently established methodologies.