Design of heterogeneous metal catalysts for organic synthesis

The chemical industry is the world largest industry and produces a variety of chemical products from fuels and plastics to life-supporting pharmaceuticals. In this industry, catalysts play an indisputable role as it is estimated that up to 90% of all processes today utilize catalysts to a certain extent. The most frequently used type of catalyst is heterogeneous catalysis with its inherent properties providing cheaper and more sustainable setups. Yet, classical heterogeneous catalysts are still not that common in the synthesis of fine-chemicals like pharmaceuticals due to their lack of selectivity commonly connected with this type of catalysis. The lack of selectivity will lead to inefficient processes and potentially undesired by-products. Thus, designing and synthesizing novel heterogeneous catalysts with high selectivity are highly attractive in the synthesis of e.g. fine-chemicals. In my PhD, different organic processes relevant to the chemical industry have been studied using (novel) heterogeneous catalysts. In one of the projects, a catalyst is made by alloying cheap base metals together and another project focuses on the mechanistic elucidation of a commercially available catalyst. The remaining projects use porous organic polymers as a support material to create heterogeneous catalysis with high selectivity in different transformation such as CO₂ hydrogenation, asymmetric C(sp³)-H arylation, and direct C(sp²)-H borylation of arenes.