A research team has developed a new class of catalysts—known as heterogeneous geminal atom catalysts (GACs)—that promotes greener and more sustainable manufacturing processes for fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
Fine chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing are major sources of air pollution, with recent studies showing the carbon footprint of the pharmaceutical industry to be heavier than the automotive industry. Beyond greenhouse gas emissions, the pharmaceutical industry is also responsible for other serious environmental impacts, such as water pollution from wastewater released by manufacturers.
“Developing alternative catalytic systems capable of achieving atomic-level precision while ensuring recoverability is at the forefront of our mission to revolutionize sustainable manufacturing processes for fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals. This ground-breaking achievement is the outcome of a close collaboration between several institutions,” said Associate Professor Lu Jiong from the Department of Chemistry under the NUS Faculty of Science, who led the team of NUS researchers.
The study was a collaboration involving Associate Professor Koh Ming Joo and Assistant Professor Zhu Ye from the Department of Chemistry under the NUS Faculty of Science, Professor Li Jun from Tsinghua University in China, Professor Javier Pérez-Ramírez from ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Dr. Xi Shibo from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore. The research was published in the journal Nature on 20 September 2023.
The synthesis of organic compounds requires a series of steps known as transition metal-catalyzed coupling reactions. These chemical reactions are indispensable for forming essential chemical bonds during the synthesis of a chemical compound. However, catalysts that are currently used in these reactions pose a number of challenges, such as high production cost, difficulty in catalyst separation for recovery and reuse, and metal contamination which is harmful to the environment. The structural architecture of current catalysts also limits their capacity to carry out complex reactions.
2023-10-11 11:00:04
Original from phys.org rnrn