Oxidative carbene-catalysis. A novel strategy for a sustainable chemistry

Research Project, 2013 – 2016

This research proposal aims at renewing the formation of the carbonyl nucleophile bond. The means are simple but not trivial. In an oxidative biomimetic system carbene heterocycles are used as catalysts to perform important reactions such as the formation of ketones, ester and amide bonds from highly functionalized aldehydes or alcohols. Conventional methods require multistep reactions with equimolar or excess amounts of reagents including tedious purifications creating huge amount waste material. Notwithstanding the economic aspects of waste handling, the sum of waste that is created is limiting to scale up due to logistic problems associated with separation, storage and disposal of chemical waste. In addition, waste management is environmentally costly with regard to transportation and destruction. By implementing an oxidative catalytic procedure the efficiency of these reactions can be improved. The reactions relies on terminal oxidants such as oxygen or air with water as the sole by-product rendering a direct and mild one-flask transformation under atom economic and environmentally benign conditions. We believe that oxidative catalysis can have a great impact on chemical synthesis in particular ester and amide bond forming processes and that there will be environmental benefits concerning chemistry as well as society.