Press release: Cost-effective and environmentally friendly chemical synthesis

No. 235 - 19.11.2018

Göttingen chemist receives ERC Starting Grant for development of new strategies

Dr Alexander Breder from the Institute of Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry at the University of Göttingen has received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC will fund Breder’s project "Electrophilicity-Lifting Directed by Organochalcogen Redox-Auxiliaries and Diversiform Organocatalysis (ELDORADO)" with approximately one and a half million euros over five years. Breder and his group are investigating how simple unsaturated hydrocarbons can be selectively functionalised by oxidation reactions. An important challenge here is that visible light alone could be used as a cost-effective energy source with just ordinary air as a renewable and environmentally friendly oxidising agent.

The targeted oxidative conversion of hydrocarbons such as alkenes into functionalised specialised chemicals is of great importance, for example, in the pharmaceutical industry. Against this background, the researchers intend to use the ERC funding to develop novel strategies for the light- and air-dependent synthesis of organic target compounds. This endeavor predicates on “homogeneous, catalytic processes”, i.e., on the action of small molecules that exert an accelerating effect on chemical reactions in solution without being used up themselves. In this way, serious disadvantages associated with conventional chemical processes - such as the co-production of pollutants that are difficult to dispose or the maintenance of energy-intensive reaction conditions - can be largely avoided.

"The use of certain organic compounds of sulphur and selenium as catalysts offers completely new and promising opportunities in chemical synthesis," says Breder. As a future direction, innovative synthesis concepts will be used to assemble structurally complex molecules, which previously could only be made accessible via very complicated reaction pathways, with comparatively little material and time input.

Alexander Breder, born in 1978, studied chemistry at Bielefeld University and received his doctorate at ETH Zurich in 2010. A DAAD postdoctoral fellowship took him to Stanford University in California. He completed his habilitation at the University of Göttingen in 2017. Breder’s work has already been recognised with several prizes and awards. Among other things, he was accepted into the Emmy Noether Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 2014.

With the Starting Grants of the ERC, the European Union supports outstanding early career researchers in building up their scientific careers. The funding is intended to enable them to develop an independent scientific career and pursue innovative ideas.

Contact:

Dr Alexander Breder

Institute of Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry

University of Göttingen

Tammannstrasse 2

37077 Göttingen

Phone: (0551) 3933285

E-mail: abreder@gwdg.de