New Frontiers in Transition Metal Free Synthesis

多年来，化学家们一直在利用化学反应来构建复杂的分子，用于从药物和农用化学品到聚合物和新材料以及许多其他各种各样的应用。特别是，产生新的碳-碳和碳-杂原子键的反应特别有用，科学家们通常使用基于过渡金属的催化剂来帮助他们实现这一目标。毫无疑问，这些催化剂使以前难以获得的支架得以制备，从而彻底改变了化学的许多分支。尽管这些金属用途广泛，但如果可能的话，许多化学家宁愿不使用这些金属。这有很多原因。首先，过渡金属通常稀有且昂贵。这自然会导致昂贵的反应，特别是在工业规模上进行的反应。此外，许多过渡金属催化剂还需要复杂的配体，这些配体本身就很昂贵，需要事先合成。有时，配体甚至比靶分子更复杂，更难以制备。因此，化学家总是对寻找新的、有效的制备复杂分子的方法感兴趣。科学家使用过渡金属时要考虑的第二个问题是它们的毒性。这些物质及其化合物中的许多也是有毒的，需要付出极大的努力才能从反应产物中去除它们的所有痕迹。这些产品通常是药物分子，自然必须符合严格的安全规定。因此，任何可以开发的消除这种催化剂的工艺都是可取的，然而迄今为止实现这一目标的工艺很少。本提案旨在解决上述问题，并开发新的工艺，创造新的碳-碳和碳杂原子键，但不使用过渡金属。这项工作将建立在我们自己实验室的初步工作的基础上，这些工作表明，简单的碱基，其中一些已经被人们熟知了几个世纪，它们的个性有着迷人的额外维度。我们的目标是研究和利用这些简单化合物的反应性，以便设计构建复杂产品的新方法。在这样做的过程中，我们希望找到更多关于这些简单化合物的信息，并提醒其他人注意它们在开发清洁、高效和经济的化学过程中可能提供的尚未开发的潜力。

For many years chemists have been using chemical reactions to build complex molecules for an array of diverse applications ranging from drugs and agrochemicals to polymers and new materials as well as many, many others. In particular, reactions that create new carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom bonds have been particularly useful and scientists have commonly used catalysts based on transition metals to help them achieve this goal. These catalysts have undoubtedly revolutionised many branches of chemistry by allowing previously inaccessible scaffolds to be prepared. Despite their general utility, many chemists would prefer not to use these metals if possible. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, transition metals are often rare and expensive. This naturally leads to an expensive reaction, especially if undertaken on an industrial scale. Furthermore, many transition metal catalysts also require complex ligands that themselves are expensive and require prior synthesis. Occasionally, the ligand can even be more complex and more difficult to prepare than the target molecule. Chemists are therefore always interested in finding new and efficient ways of preparing complex molecules A second consideration for scientists employing transition metals is their toxicity. Many of these substances and their compounds are also toxic and extreme effort is required to remove all traces of them from the reaction products. These products are frequently drug molecules and naturally must meet strict safety regulations. Any process that can be developed where such catalysts are eliminated is therefore desirable, however very few have achieved this goal so far. This proposal seeks to address the above issues and develop new processes that create new carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom bonds but without employing transition metals. The work will build on the preliminary work from our own laboratory which suggests that simple bases, some of them known for centuries have a fascinating additional dimension to their personality. We aim to both study and exploit the reactivity of these simple compounds in order to engineer new methods of constructing complex products. In doing so we hope to find out more about these simple compounds and so alert others to the untapped potential that they might offer in developing clean, efficient and economical chemical processes.