Ni-CAT · Ni-CAT

Ni-CAT

The Ni-CAT project aims at boosting the catalytic activity of Ni for effectuating challenging oxidation and bond formation reactions. As a key concept to achieve this goal, the metal centers will be combined with mesoionic ligands, a class of ligands that is able to transiently store and release electrons and that is thus particularly suited for assisting a coordinated metal center in effectuating electron transfer processes. This metal-ligand synergy alleviates the limitations typically encountered for bond activation processes with nickel, which often undergoes one-electron redox changes only. This concept renders catalytic transformations with this less reactive metal center energetically feasible and eventually efficient and will introduce a new paradigm in using Earth-abundant metals in homogeneous catalysis. The exploitation of intrinsic metal ligand cooperativity for electron transfer provides a compelling strategy to develop a sustainable process towards efficient C–H bond activation that is not dependent on precious metals. Hence, the key objective of the Ni-Cat project is to develop efficient catalysts for C-C coupling based on nickel complexes that contain donor-flexible mesoionic ligands, with the ultimate goal to activate C-H bonds for functionalization. This overarching objective will encompass i) successful application of synergistic metal/ligand effects for inducing catalytic activity. ii) solid understanding of mechanistic key principles to tailor and improve performance in catalysis. iii) a gradual shift to more challenging substrates for C–C cross coupling reactions iv) expansion of the coupling reaction to halide-free substrates in order to induce nickel-catalyzed C–H bond activation, thus breaking into new grounds of catalysis using this cheap and Earth-abundant metal.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз