Current Research Projects

NHC complexes of high-valent molybdenum ions

High-valent molybdenum complexes have recently been found to be valuable catalysts for deoxygenative transformations, including the reduction of nitroarenes and the deoxygenation of biomass to olefines.

Especially the latter process is crucial to ensure our supply of feedstock chemicals for industry during our shift from fossil fuels to renewable and green energy sources.

We focus on the development of new catalytic systems capable of performing catalytic deoxygenations using N-heterocyclic carbenes as spectator ligands. Our aim is to understand the underlying mechanism and to design new efficient catalysts.

Anilidophosphine complexes of the lanthanide series

Although the chemistry of lanthanides has been explored for decades, the majority of these studies still focusses on the use of the ubiquitous cyclopentadiene ligand (C5R5) which was among the first ligands used in lanthanide chemistry. However, to develop a rich field in chemistry, also other spectator and non-spectator ligands need to be explored.

One class of ligands that has been well studied in transition metal chemistry, but has only been poorly investigated in f-element chemistry, are phosphine derived ligands with chelating PN(P) coordination motifs. Our goal is to develop new, robust metal complexes using these kind of unique ligands and study their reactivity, their electrochemical and spectroscopic properties.