GOALI: An Industrial-Academic Collaboration for Sustainable Catalysis with Earth Abundant Metals

With the support of the Chemical Catalysis Program in the Division of Chemistry, Professor Paul Chirik of Princeton University and Marion Emmert and Michael Shevlin at the Merck Catalysis Laboratory are studying new chemical methods for the sustainable and low-cost synthesis of pharmaceuticals at scale. Catalysis is a key economic driver and it is transformative for the synthesis of valuable natural products, pharmaceuticals, materials and molecular devices.

This collaboration focuses on the catalytic chemistry used to build the scaffolds of pharmaceutical drugs on scale in process chemistry laboratories. Unfortunately, at the present time, the most successful and widely used catalysts for pharmaceutical manufacture rely on the least abundant metals on earth, thus compromising environmental sustainability.

The Princeton-Merck team seeks to combat this problem by identifying new viable catalytic processes based instead on metals that are both abundant and domestically available, such as iron, cobalt, and nickel. In addition to the anticipated economic and environmental benefits that it will provide, the new catalyst technology will be applied to expanding the types of chemical processes that can be achieved to broaden the emerging repertoire of base metal-catalyzed transformations.

The broader impacts of the award are further extended by the gains accrued to society as Professor Chirik and his co-workers engage in a range of educational and outreach activities. Students participating in the funded research will benefit from the unique training environment enabled by this industrial-academic collaboration and they are likely to emerge as future science and technology leaders who are ready to promote and translate the principles of sustainable chemistry.

Outreach efforts are directed toward public engagement with the goal of changing perceptions through educational modules that emphasize a systems approach to catalysis and translation. Career development and broadening participation from individuals belonging to underrepresented groups are the primary goals of a range of proposed seminars, workshops, and social media engagements at the academic-industrial interface.

The use of earth abundant transition metals in catalysis is a critical component of sustainable chemistry. Realizing the full potential of these elements in drug synthesis is reliant on the discovery of robust and accessible precursors for a diverse array of bond-forming reactions. Accordingly, the funded research is focused on interfacing fundamental organometallic chemistry with applications in new bond constructions to motivate the discovery of versatile iron and cobalt precursors for broader use throughout the synthetic chemistry and catalysis community.

Synthetic methods such as oxidatively-induced reductive elimination and arene displacement from unique metal sandwich compounds are being explored to expand the types of iron and cobalt catalysts that are available across a range of oxidation states. Emphasis is placed on transformations that may accelerate the synthesis and discovery of bioactive molecules with increased C(sp3) content.

Processes of active interest in this regard include asymmetric hydrogenation, reductive hydroformylation, and hydroaminomethylation from substrate classes encompassing alkenes with remote amino- and hydroxyl-substitution, as well as those with heterocycles that are known poisons for precious metal catalysts. It is anticipated that the findings of this work will lead to fundamental advances in the theory and practice of organic synthesis using earth abundant transition metal-based catalysts with the promise of more sustainable and economical future chemical manufacturing processes.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.