Project description
Sustainable routes for the conversion of simple hydrocarbons into the original chiral building
Green chemistry focuses on the design of processes for the synthesis of organic molecules of interest while reducing waste generation and demand on rare and poorly available resources. The EU-funded AlCHiMIE project will work on complementary approaches for converting hydrocarbons – the simplest feedstock – into high value-added chiral alkanes that could become original building blocks for medicinal and agro-chemistry. The first approach will involve the metal-free functionalisation of hydrocarbons through regio- and stereoselective C–H bond activation. The second approach will concern the valorisation of alkanes through earth-abundant metal-catalysed C(sp3)–H activation. To achieve this goal and overcome the critical issue of the low reactivity of C(sp3)-H bonds, original catalytic systems involving the design of 'smart' ligands or the use of highly activated coupling partners will be proposed.
Objective
Over the last decade, major environmental concerns, a growing worldwide population and an increasing energy demand, combined with the depletion of natural resources, have become crucial issues. Sustainable chemistry-ably to supply society with key chemical products in an eco-compatible manner-has therefore rapidly become an urgent challenge. The AlCHiMIE aims at providing new solutions towards this important defy by developing a set of complementary approaches to convert hydrocarbons, the simplest feedstock, into high value-added chiral alkanes-essential building blocks for medicinal chemistry. Two approaches are thus proposed. First, undirected, metal-free functionalization of hydrocarbons will be achieved by means of regio- and stereo-selective hypervalent bromine-enabled C-H functionalization. This unique reactivity will be attaint by discovering a largely uncharted, yet extremely appealing field of bromanes. The second approach concerns earth-abundant metal-catalyzed C(sp3)-H activation. To obviate the inherent difficulties of this field, namely the low reactivity of alkanes and arduous stereoinduction while using 3d metals, I will develop bifunctional ligands for Co- and Ni-catalyzed C-H activation. In addition to the role of metal coordination, these ligands featuring a second coordinating motif, will enhance the metallation event and will promote the substrates activation, thus unlocking the door towards previously inaccessible modes of reactivity. The combination of both strategies will allow unprecedented hydrocarbon valorization by means of undirected, hypervalent bromine-enabled first functionalization followed by exploiting the newly installed coordinating motif to promote directed, asymmetric Co- and Ni-catalyzed C-H activations. Finally, I will also endeavor in establishing new reactivities arising from the application of diversely substituted hypervalent bromines as coupling partners in enantioselective Co- and Ni-catalyzed C-H activations.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistryhydrocarbons
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistryhalogens
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Funding Scheme
ERC-STG - Starting GrantHost institution
97070 Wuerzburg
Germany