Prof. Dmitri Gelman von der Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel:
Small-molecule catalysts, equipped with a supplementary coordination sphere, have already proved themselves highly efficient in many important chemical transformations. It was previously demonstrated that attractive interactions between the secondary coordination environment and the substrate largely govern stereoselectivity and the reactivity of the primary catalytic site. This approach may become truly practical if divergent synthesis of libraries of such multifunctional catalysts is available, thus allowing facile shuffling of functional groups in the primary and secondary coordination spheres.
In this lecture, we will describe our efforts to develop modular 3-D ligands as a universal platform to examine catalytic reactions guided by secondary coordination sphere-substrate attractive interactions.
