CATCH ME IF YOU CAN: Selective CO₂ conversion via chiral CO₂ trapping

Personal research project awarded to CHOCO PI Kathrin by the Research Council of Norway with 12 million NOK for the period 2020-2026.

The focus of CATCHME is on identifying molecules that can bind CO₂ and promote C-CO₂ bond formation, with the ultimate goal to develop asymmetric carboxylation reactions. High-level quantum chemistry and experimental methods will be used in order to investigate the behaviour of CO₂ during C-CO₂ bond formations in the presence of trapping molecules.

Project summary
C-C bond formation with CO₂ typically involves metal-bound carbon nucleophiles. Recent research by us on C-CO₂ bond formation indicates that in many reactions of this type, CO₂ does not interact with the metal at the C-C bond formation step. CO₂ thus experiences no activation from the metal centre. The unbound state of CO₂ may be the reason that attempts towards enantioselective CO₂ conversion often are unsuccessful, because the free CO₂ is little affected by the chiral metal complexes that are employed. CATCHME proposes a novel strategy for enantioselective CO₂ conversion, involving trapping of CO₂ prior to C-C bond formation. Although many molecules are known that can trap CO₂ (e.g. N-heterocyclic carbenes or frustrated Lewis pairs) they are typically employed in CO₂ reduction or O-C bond formation, but not in C-C bond forming reactions. A critical aspect of CATCHME will be to identify CO₂-adducts that are active in C-C bond formation. Further, if the adducts are chiral, this could provide a novel approach towards enantioselective C-C bond formation with CO₂. CATCHME will employ high-level quantum chemistry methods to obtain general insights and identify promising trapping molecules, followed by organic chemistry approaches to test chiral CO₂ trapping in enantioselective formation of carboxylic acids.

Concept of CATCHME: Trapping of CO₂ may lead to enhanced activity in C-C bond formation and gives the possibility to design reactions leading to enantioselective C-CO₂ bond formation

The CATCHME team
The CATCHME team consists of the project leader Assoc. Prof. Kathrin H. Hopmann, collaborator Assoc. Prof. Annette Bayer, postdoctoral fellow Dr. Ljiljana Pavlovic and CHOCO PhD student Cuong Dat Do.

The CATCHME project will additionally open two positions at postdoc level, one in computational chemistry and one in experimental organometallic chemistry. The positions will be announced HERE