ICREA announced the list of winners of the ICREA Acadèmia awards 2019, among which are three (!!!) names from the University of Girona: Sebastià Puig (Engineering), Anna Company and Albert Poater (both IQCC and Chemistry). Albert Poater belongs to DIMOCAT group.
Olefin metathesis seems to be a complex chemical reaction, but if we say that leads to the formation of polymers, i.e. plastics, it is really simple and it is valid in any item that currently we have in our hands. This field of olefin metathesis is mature, after the Nobel Prize in 2005 of Chauvin, Schrock and Grubbs, but still here with two simple modifications we have been able to get novel catalysts that lead to amazing selectivity. In collaboration with the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the IQCC team from DIMOCAT led by Albert Poater shows that cis-diiodo sulfur chelated ruthenium benzylidenes do not react with strained cycloalkenes and internal olefins, but can effectively catalyze metathesis reactions of terminal dienes. Surprisingly, internal olefins may partake in olefin metathesis reactions once the ruthenium methylidene intermediate is generated. This unexpected behavior allows the facile formation of strained cis-cyclooctene by the RCM reaction of 1,9-undecadiene. Once in silico calculations confirmed the promising different behavior of those novel catalysts, the impressively latent catalyst was activated experimentally by addition of an external chloride source, unveiling a novel method for controlled polymerization of DCPD.
B. Nechmad, R. Phatake, E. Ivry, A. Poater, N. G. Lemcoff; “Unprecedented Selectivity of Sulfur Chelated Ruthenium Iodide Benzylidenes in Olefin Metathesis Reactions”; Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2020, accepted. DOI: 10.1002/anie.201914667
In search of green or sustainable chemistry there are different objectives to achieve, and already achieve successfully one already represents a step forward to improve the world that surrounds us. Here, in this collaborative work between the experimental team of the University of Normandy (France) led by Prof. Jean Luc Renaud, and from Girona, Dr. Albert Poater the computational complementary part, has been able to achieve not only find a catalyst capable of fixing CO2, but to find out one that is not based on noble metals, expensive, and of high toxicity, and furthermore, dealing with water as a solvent. An iron, most abundant metal catalyst of the Earth’s layer has been employed. Overall, a highly efficient, stable, phosphine-free, and easy-to-synthesize iron catalyst system for the reduction of CO2, hydrogenocarbonate, and carbonate in pure water is reported.
Coufourier, Q. Gaignard-Gaillard, J.-F. Lohier, A. Poater, S. Gaillard, J.-L. Renaud; “Hydrogenation of CO2, Hydrogenocarbonate, and Carbonate to Formate in Water using Phosphine Free Bifunctional Iron Complexes”; ACS Catal. 2020, 10, 2108-2116. DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.9b04340