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Project

Unsymmetrical Strategies in Dual Gold Catalysis: Fine-tuning and Bottom-up Design of Catalytic Systems

During the first two decades of the millennium, the research field of gold catalysis has received enormous attention from the scientific community. Recently, a new concept has emerged in gold chemistry, namely homobimetallic dual catalysis where two distinct gold centers activate both nucleophilic and electrophilic sites in a given transformation. Despite the major advances, there is still a fundamental concept in dual gold catalysis that remains unexplored. This concept is based on the hypothesis that two distinct gold centers which are destined to perform complementary tasks, should in principle have complementary characteristics. In this project, we plan on introducing for the first time the concept of unsymmetrical (or mixed) homobimetallic gold pre-catalysts, in which each gold center will bear a rationally designed ligand, with the purpose of enhancing its ability to activate the appropriate substrate. The performance of these new catalysts will be evaluated in known reactions and compared to known digold catalysts. Furthermore, this design will be used to extend gold catalysis to new transformations, such as the domino synthesis of cyclic sulfoximines and the hydrophosphonylation of alkynes.

Date:1 Nov 2020 →  14 Jul 2023
Keywords:new reactions, rational system design, Dual gold catalysis
Disciplines:Organic chemical synthesis, Transition metal chemistry, Organometallic chemistry, Catalysis, Sustainable chemistry not elsewhere classified