Catalysis, from the ligand outwards.

The approach

A catalyst is a designed environment around a metal center. Change the ancillary ligand and you change the rate, the selectivity and the architecture of everything the catalyst makes. The group's work is largely an exercise in that relationship — built on organometallic compounds of main-group and transition metals, and on simple metal salts where they will do the job.

Catalytic systems

• Group 4 organometallics — Ti(IV), Zr(IV) and Hf complexes with half-salen, salen, salan and salphen scaffolds, imino-phenoxides, and [NNO], [OO] and [NO] donor ligands.
• Main-group compounds — Zn(II), Al(III) and Mg(II) systems, including chiral proline-derived complexes.
• Metal-free catalysis — phosphorus(V) compounds and Lewis-pair catalysts giving fully alternating polyesters and hyperbranched polyglycerols.
• Olefin polymerization — new non-metallocene pre-catalysts, and organometallic cocatalysts developed during work with the Dow Chemical Company.
• Simple metal salts — silver- and iron-mediated catalytic transformations of organic molecules.

Beyond polymers

The same catalytic thinking has been applied to process development for active pharmaceutical ingredients, to dye degradation and microbial remediation for water treatment, and to CO₂ hydrogenation.