Professor Titel Jurca
Inorganic, Seminars
Description
Title: “Building a Toolbox for Sustainable Synthesis and Catalysis”
Abstract: The presentation will focus on three of our current areas of interest:
Mechanochemical synthesis: by leveraging mechanochemical forces via vibratory ball milling or ultrasonic irradiation, we can expedite the synthesis of both conventional, and exotic Schiff base coordination complexes. Critically these reactions can be performed solvent-free or solvent-minimal, and facilitate the formation of target compounds in one-pot and one-step from multiple starting materials in minutes-to-hours compared to conventional multi-day, multi-step processes.
Silane-based reductions: using silanes, high-valent, mid d-block metal halides can be controllably reduced to highly reactive mid-valent synthons (e.g. MoCl3). The reactions are facile, and produce only H2 and recoverable chlorosilanes as byproduct. The resulting products are ideal starting points towards new precursors for ALD and CVD; enabling technologies for coatings, electronic materials, and heterogeneous catalysis.
Monolith-based nanocatalysts: controlled growth of nanocatalysts on contiguous Ni foams. Ni foams afford numerous advantages; among these include ease of handling and facile separability inherent to monolith systems, suitability for continuous flow catalysis, and self-stirring. The application of these materials towards catalytic hydrogenations will be discussed.
