Self-assembly of asymmetric catalysts

均相催化在化学合成中起着越来越重要的作用。催化剂可以大大加快化学反应的速度，而催化剂本身在反应中不会被耗尽。对化学过程对环境危害较小的需求增加了利用微量催化剂促进两种化学品之间清洁，有效反应的重要性，这些化学品通常不会以可测量的速率相互反应。均相催化的一个重要挑战是能够在保持高催化活性的同时控制选择性。许多重要的药物和农用化学品以两种称为光学异构体的镜像结构存在，它们就像你的左手和右手一样相关，尽管具有相同的化学成分，但每个镜像具有非常不同的生物学特性（以光学异构体存在的新药现在需要以单一光学异构体的形式制备）。因此，有大量的研究工作旨在生产光学活性化合物作为单一的光学异构体用于制药工业，催化方法可能更有效，对环境的危害更小。然而，阻碍催化方法广泛应用的一个大问题是，为正在研究的特定反应找到完美的催化剂需要大量的时间和金钱。许多催化剂很难制造，对一组反应物有用的催化剂通常对另一组反应物没有希望。现在，人们对快速制备大量催化剂的方法产生了极大的兴趣。该方案的宏伟目标是制定解决这一问题的新办法。催化剂的制备可以通过在瞬时反应中结合大量互补添加剂来改变，该反应使用氢键将分子保持在一起（氢键是将DNA保持在一起的键，并且在没有任何化学试剂或干预的情况下非常迅速地形成）。如果该项目完全成功，寻找完美催化剂所需的时间将大大减少，化学家将拥有类似于万能钥匙的东西来打开每一扇门：一个催化剂工具箱，可以根据可能使用的每一组反应物进行调整。该项目将涉及自吸收过程机制的详细工作，评估氢键的强度及其形成条件。使用这种方法，在目前具有挑战性但重要的催化反应中的一些新的发展应该是可能的

Homogeneous catalysis plays an ever-increasing role in chemical synthesis. A catalyst allows the rate of a chemical reaction to be accelerated enormously, without the catalyst itself being used up in the reaction. The demand for chemical processes to be less harmful to the environment has increased the importance of reactions that utilise tiny amounts of catalyst to promote clean, efficient reactions between two chemicals that do not normally react with each other at a measurable rate. An important challenge in homogeneous catalysis is being able to control selectivity while retaining high catalytic activity. Many important drug and agro- chemicals exist as two mirror image structures called optical isomers that are related like your left and right hands, and despite sharing the same chemical composition, each mirror image has very different biological properties (New drugs that exist as optical isomers are now required to be prepared as a single optical isomer). There is therefore a massive research effort aimed at producing optically active compounds as single optical isomers for the pharmaceutical industry, with catalytic methods being potentially more efficient and less harmful to the environment. However, one of the big problems that prevents wider application of catalytic methods is the vast amount of time and money required to find the perfect catalyst for the specific reaction being studied. Many catalysts are difficult to make, and a catalyst that is good for one group of reactants is often hopeless for another. There is now massive interest in methodology that allows a large number of catalysts to be prepared rapidly. This programme has the ambitious aim of developing a new approach to solving this problem. The preparation of catalysts that can be changed by binding to a large collection of complementary additives in an instantaneous reaction that uses hydrogen bonding to hold the molecules together (Hydrogen bonds are the bonds that hold DNA together, and are formed very rapidly without any chemical reagents or intervention). If the project is fully successful, the time taken to find the perfect catalyst will be reduced dramatically, and chemists will have something analagous to a skeleton key for unlocking every door: a toolbox of catalysts that can be adjusted to every set of reactants that might be used. The project will involve detailed work on the mechanism of the self-asembly process, evaluating the strength of the hydrogen bonds and the conditions under which they are able to form. Using this approach some new development in currently challenging but important catalytic reactions should be possible