Innovative approach to design and synthesis of platinum-N-heterocyclic carbene hydrosilylation precatalysts.

Hydrosilylation, the addition of silicon hydrides across unsaturated carbon-carbon and carbon-oxygen bonds, is in many ways a process of high sustainability, not only utilizing reagents which are inexpensive, stable and consisted of earth abundant elements, but also fully atom-economical. As it is being performed worldwide on an enormous scale, even the smallest improvements may have meaningful economic and environmental consequences. This project is focused on the development of new, more sustainable methods for the synthesis of the state-of-the-art platinum-N-heterocyclic carbene catalysts, redesigning the precatalyst in search of the advances in its performance and optimization of the innovative membrane-assisted nanofiltration methods for the recovery of platinum.