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

美国国家科学基金会化学部的催化计划支持普林斯顿大学Paul Chirik教授的研究。该研究项目是与Rebecca Ruck和Danielle Schultz博士以及Merck Co. Inc.合作进行的。 该研究小组正在设计新的催化剂-加速理想化学反应的复合物，通常用于制造药物，农产品和其他专业和商品化学品。 该团队正在设计和开发使用铁和钴等“地球丰富元素”的新催化剂。 这些元素比银、金、铂和其他常用于工业催化的金属更便宜、更丰富。这项工作的挑战在于，许多商业工艺都是针对铂金属进行优化的。为了设计这些昂贵和稀有金属的替代品，该团队正在研究化学反应的详细步骤。 该研究团队正在利用高通量机器人技术和“配体库”来快速安全地测试大量新催化剂。由于与工业界的密切合作，该项目为下一代科学家提供了出色的工作经验。这个项目的同事包括那些历史上代表性不足的群体。用第一行过渡金属，特别是铁和钴作为贵金属的替代物的催化是有吸引力的。除了潜在的成本和环境效益之外，这些金属还经常显示出在活性、选择性、溶剂特性以及它们产生新的转化的独特能力方面表现出上级性能。这项研究是与默克化学公司合作进行的，重点是了解第一行过渡金属在药物合成相关催化中的机制。感兴趣的具体反应包括用于立体选择性制备多功能聚硼化合物的方法、设置远程立体中心的不对称链运行反应和醇活化反应性。合作是这项工作的关键，因为工业集团促进了完全集成的高通量实验，分析方法和目标选择，而基础有机金属化学，光谱学和电子结构测定则在普林斯顿完成。该研究的更广泛影响利用了学术-工业伙伴关系创造的独特培训环境，以解决社会可持续性挑战。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Catalysis Program of the Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation supports the research of Professor Paul Chirik at Princeton University. This research project is conducted in collaboration with Drs. Rebecca Ruck and Danielle Schultz and at Merck & Co. Inc. The research team is designing new catalysts - complexes that speed up desirable chemical reactions, often used for making pharmaceutical drugs, agricultural products, and other specialty and commodity chemicals. This team is designing and developing new catalysts using "earth-abundant elements" such as iron and cobalt. These elements are cheaper and more abundant than silver, gold, platinum, and other metals that are often used in industrial catalysis. The challenge in this work is that many commercial processes are optimized for platinum metals. To design replacements for these expensive and rare metals, the team is studying the detailed steps in the chemical reactions. The research team is taking advantage of high throughput robotics and "ligand libraries" to test large numbers of new catalysts rapidly and safely. Due to the strong collaboration with industry, this project results in excellent work experience for the next generation of scientists. Coworkers on this project include those from historically underrepresented groups. Catalysis with first row transition metals, particularly iron and cobalt, as alternatives to precious metals is attractive. In addition to the potential cost and environmental benefits, these metals have often been shown to exhibit superior performance in terms of activity, selectivity, solvent profile as well as their unique abilities to produce new transformations. This research, conducted in collaboration with the chemical company Merck, focuses on understanding the mechanisms of first row transition metals in catalysis relevant to drug synthesis. Specific reactions of interest include methods for the stereoselective preparation of versatile polyboron compounds, asymmetric chain-running reactions to set remote stereocenters, and alcohol activation reactivity. Collaboration is key to this effort as fully integrated high throughout experiments, analytic methods, and target selection are facilitated by the industrial group, whereas fundamental organometallic chemistry, spectroscopy, and electronic structure determinations are done at Princeton. The broader impacts of the research takes advantage of the unique training environment created from the academic-industrial partnership to solve societal sustainability challenges. Educational efforts include elementary age children, non-scientist majors and advanced undergraduates and graduates studying catalysis.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.