Building Novel Cluster Based Transition Metal-Main Group Cooperative Catalysts

Catalysts are central to the manufacturing sector, with 90% of chemical products produced requiring a catalytic step at some point in their preparation.

Catalysts can allow chemical processes to occur with greater efficiency and selectivity or enable new transformations that would otherwise not occur.

They underpin practically all our modern commodities, including but not limited to pharmaceuticals, electronics, polymers and plastics, and agrochemicals.

However, many modern catalyst technologies are based on Platinum Group Metal, these metals are extremely scarce in the earth's crust and expensive.

And as many of these metals are poorly recycled, they are a depleting resource with the costs associated with their use (both fiscal and environmental) only increasing.

One answer to moving towards more sustainable manufacturing practices is to use catalysts based on inexpensive and more earth abundant elements, including those based on p-block and first row transition metal elements. However, catalysts based on these elements often do not out-preform their expensive metal competition.

To address limitations, in this project I use synthetic science to target cooperative catalysts that feature multiple catalytic sites in close enough proximately to enhance their individual reactivity and build systems that are greater than the sum of their parts.

Unlike other cooperative catalysts that have been previously reported, in this work the catalytic sites are mounted onto dynamic cluster platforms that can modulate their electronic and geometric responses during catalysis, lowing the barrier to key catalytic steps and enhancing reactivity.

The specific transformations targeted during this project include olefin functionalisation reactions that build key building block molecules for the manufacturing sector and those that valorise greenhouse gas emissions.

The key objectives that will be met during this project include: i) the synthesis and full characteristics of a new category of sustainable element catalysts; ii) studies that quantify the performance of these new catalysts with others reported; iii) undertaking experimental and computational mechanistic studies to better understand catalyst performance; iv) develop transformations that are currently not possible with other sustainable element catalysts.

This project involves and delivers training in a diverse range of skills in synthetic science, spectroscopy, and computational chemistry.

This project falls within the EPSRC 'energy and decarbonisation', 'physical sciences', and 'manufacturing the future' research areas.