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许多不同的应用。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。这些催化剂无疑使化学的许多分支发生了革命性的变化，使以前无法接触到的支架得以制备。尽管这些金属具有广泛的用途，但如果可能的话，许多化学家不愿使用它们。造成这种情况的原因有很多。首先，过渡金属通常稀有且昂贵。这自然会导致昂贵的反应，特别是在工业规模进行的情况下。此外，许多过渡金属催化剂还需要复杂的配体，而这些配体本身就很昂贵，需要事先合成。有时，配体甚至可能比目标分子更复杂，更难制备。因此，化学家总是对寻找制备复杂分子的新的有效方法感兴趣。使用过渡金属的科学家的第二个考虑因素是它们的毒性。其中许多物质及其化合物也是有毒的，需要付出极大的努力才能从反应产物中去除所有这些物质的痕迹。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，可以开发的任何可以消除这种催化剂的工艺都是可取的，然而，到目前为止，实现这一目标的人很少。这项提议寻求解决上述问题，并开发新的工艺，在不使用过渡金属的情况下创建新的碳-碳和碳-杂原子键。这项工作将建立在我们自己实验室的初步工作基础上，这项工作表明，简单的碱基，其中一些已知了几个世纪，在它们的个性中有一个迷人的额外维度。我们的目标是研究和开发这些简单化合物的反应性，以设计制造复杂产品的新方法。通过这样做，我们希望更多地了解这些简单的化合物，从而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.