New catalytic reduction and coupling methods

催化涉及石油，能源生产，化学品生产和食品工业部门的大量工业过程。它在汽油生产、汽车排放控制、聚合物生产、药物合成和食品加工等不同领域都至关重要。催化是一个非常重要的现象，直接或间接地占工业化国家GDP的20-25%。这些催化方法中的许多是由后过渡金属如铑和铂介导的，后过渡金属受到价格增加和公认毒性的影响（例如Speier的氢化硅烷化催化剂H2 PtCl 6和威尔金森的氢化催化剂（Ph 3 P）3RhCl）。 我们的研究计划涉及开发新的催化剂和催化方法，将有机化合物转化为有用的产品。一个目标是发现新的方法来减少通常难以实现的，如腈，酰胺，酯和杂芳族化合物，如吡啶或喹诺酮。我们还对使这些方法具有化学选择性感兴趣，即当存在其他敏感基团时，能够仅对分子的一部分进行所需的还原。这有助于提高产品的产量，简化其分离，并最大限度地减少浪费。我们还将研究使用毒性较低、价格较低的早期过渡金属，如钼，作催化剂。此外，我们将进行机理研究，以了解我们的新催化剂如何工作。这将帮助我们为特定应用设计更好、可预测的催化剂。我们的研究将带来强大的新合成工具，用于更有效地制备各种工业，家用和实验室应用产品。

Catalysis is involved in a large number of industrial processes in the petroleum, energy production, chemicals production, and the food industry sectors. It is essential in areas as diverse as gasoline production, control of auto emissions, production of polymers, synthesis of pharmaceuticals and food processing. Catalysis is a very important phenomenon, accounting (by some estimates) directly and indirectly for 20-25% of GDP of industrialised countries. Many of these catalytic processes are mediated by late transition metals, such as rhodium and platinum, that suffer from increasing prices and recognized toxicity (e.g. Speier's hydrosilylation catalyst H2PtCl6 and Wilkinson's hydrogenation catalyst (Ph3P)3RhCl). Our research programme is concerned with the development of new catalysts and catalytic methods for transforming organic compounds into useful products. One goal is to discover new methods for reductions that are normally difficult to accomplish, such as those of nitriles, amides, esters and heteroaromatic compounds like pyridine or quinolone. We are also interested in making these methods chemoselective, that is, being able to perform the desired reduction on only one part of the molecule when other sensitive groups are present. This helps increase the yield of the product, simplifies its isolation, and minimizes waste. We shall also study the use of less toxic and less expensive early transition metals, such as molybdenum, for catalysis. In addition we shall perform mechanistic studies in order to understand how our new catalysts work. This will help us design better, predictable catalysts for specific applications. Our research will lead to powerful new synthetic tools for more efficient preparation of a variety of products with industrial, household and laboratory applications.