The development of catalytic Mitsunobu reactions

当今化学家和化学工程师面临的主要挑战之一是开发清洁、节能的工艺。这个问题的本质是需要在无害环境的条件下选择性地形成化学键。我们建议开发催化剂，它将介导一系列化学反应的清洁，原子高效版本，用于世界各地的学术和工业实验室。目前，这些反应每产生一分子产物，就会产生两分子废物。相比之下，所提出的催化化学产生的唯一废物是水。所提出的研究将导致更清洁的化学反应，将广泛应用于学术和工业实验室，对催化和绿色化学领域具有根本意义。

One of the major challenges facing chemists and chemical engineers today is the development of clean, energy efficient processes. Inherent in this problem is the necessity to selectively form chemical bonds under environmentally benign conditions. We propose to develop catalysts which will mediate clean, atom efficient versions of a family of chemical reactions used in academic and industrial laboratories worldwide. These reactions currently produce two molecules of waste for every molecule of product generated. In contrast, the only waste product produced by the proposed catalytic chemistry is water. The proposed research will result in cleaner chemical reactions which will be widely used in academic and industrial laboratories and is fundamentally significant to the fields of catalysis and green chemistry.