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

催化作用在我们日常生活中各种产品的高效生产中起着至关重要的作用，但吨级规模的工业过程仍然依赖于地壳中一些最稀有的金属，如铑、钯、铱和铂。如果要发展真正可持续的化学过程，这些元素的继续使用是必须解决的一个重大挑战。为了解决这个问题，目前的策略是利用贱金属（BM）和主族（MG）元素，尽管基于它们单独使用的催化应用受到单电子氧化还原事件的偏好和对它们的氧化还原活性知之甚少的阻碍。该提案将融合配位化学、有机金属合成和催化领域，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中心的双电子事件，将使用低价的13族元素来促进协同键激活过程。这将使我们能够为贱金属注入高贵，模仿传统上由贵金属进行的有机转化，并提供超越它们的反应性。这个项目将把地球上最丰富的金属铝与可持续的、高度丰富的BM结合起来。BM与亚价Al配体结合的催化使用仍然是一个未知的领域，也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，并最终显著减少目前由珍贵的纳米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.