ERC Advanced grant

Preparation of polyfunctional organometallics: new key intermediates for synthetic organic chemistry

The use of organometallic reagents in the last decades completely changed synthetic organic chemistry. These reactive intermediates made now available new materials with outstanding physical properties, novel drugs with excellent activity spectra, modern highly efficient and ecologically benign agrochemicals.

The goal of this work is the development of new synthetic routes and a practical access to polyfunctional organometallic reagents using affordable and non-toxic metals such as Mg, Al, Ti, Ca, Mn, and Fe. These new types of organometallics will find an extremely broad range of applications in contemporary organic synthesis.
New advanced approaches to these reagents will be based on the recently discovered beneficial influence of environmentally friendly salts such as LiCl on the preparation of these reactive intermediates.

The main synthetic goal to design new organometallic reagents bearing practically all important functional groups used in organic synthesis. This work will lead to ground-breaking advances in main-group synthetic chemistry and make a broad range of completely novel organometallic compounds available for applications in industry.
The availability of such intermediates will revolutionize from the point of view of economy and environmental impact the syntheses of important drugs, modern agrochemicals, as well as perspective compounds with new groundbreaking physical properties for sophisticated electronics and related applications. We plan to study the applications of these new reagents in the field of pharmacology, natural product synthesis, and life and material sciences.

The new approach will concentrate on ecologically friendly organometallics of low toxicity and finding the novel synthetic ways in order to minimize the environmental impact of the synthetic intermediates.