INNOBA: Infusing Nobility to Base Metals through Metal-Ligand Cooperation

催化在有效制造我们日常生活中使用的各种产品方面发挥着基础性的作用，但吨级的工业过程仍然依赖于地壳中一些最稀有的金属，如Rh、Pd、Ir和Plus。继续使用这些元素是一个重大挑战，如果要发展真正可持续的化学进程，就必须加以解决。为了解决这一问题，目前的战略利用了贱金属(BM)和主族(MG)元素的使用，尽管基于它们单独使用的催化应用分别受到偏爱单电子氧化还原事件及其鲜为人知的氧化还原活性的阻碍。这一提议将融合配位化学、有机金属合成和催化等领域，旨在揭示融合这两种策略最有前途的特性的平台。为了促进和控制BM中心的两电子事件，将使用低价第13族元素来促进合作键激活过程。这将使我们能够为贱金属注入高贵的元素，模仿传统上由贵金属进行的有机转变，并提供超出它们的反应性。该项目将把地球上最丰富的金属铝与可持续和高度丰富的BM配对。催化使用BM和亚价铝配体仍然是一个未知的领域，是建立一个新的化学空间的绝佳机会。INNOBA的发展必将带来独特的可持续催化平台，并最终大幅减少目前由珍贵的NM催化剂催化的无数有机转化的碳足迹。

Catalysis plays a fundamental role in the efficient manufacture of all manner of products used in our daily life, but ton-scale industrial processes still rely on some of the rarest metals in the Earth's crust, such as rhodium, palladium, iridium, and platinum. The continued use of these elements represents a major challenge that must be addressed if truly sustainable chemical processes are to be developed. To tackle this issue, current strategies exploit the use of base metals (BM) and main group (MG) elements, albeit catalytic applications based on their separate use is hampered by the preference for one-electron redox events and their poorly understood redox activity, respectively. This proposal will merge the fields of coordination chemistry, organometallic synthesis, and catalysis, aiming at unveiling platforms merging the most promising properties of both strategies. With the objective of promoting and controlling two-electron events at BM centres, low-valent group 13 elements will be used to promote cooperative bond activation processes. This will allow us to infuse nobility to base metals, mimic organic transformations traditionally performed by precious metals and provide reactivity beyond them. This project will pair Al, the most abundant metal on Earth, with sustainable and highly abundant BM. Catalytic use of BM combined with subvalent Al ligands remains an uncharted territory and an exceptional opportunity to establish a new chemical space. The development of INNOBA will certainly lead to unique sustainable catalytic platforms and, eventually, a dramatic reduction of the carbon footprint of countless organic transformations currently catalysed by precious NM catalysts.