The amount of waste produced by the chemical industry as a whole is in the millions of tons per year. Many processes are very sustainable, but the sizeable scale of reactions inevitably mean the amount of waste is also large. To date, catalysis has helped tremendously to reduce waste in the industry and increase the efficiency of reactions. For example, catalytic homogenous hydrogenations are prevalent in pharmaceutical syntheses. The catalysts currently available for homogenous hydrogenations are efficient but are not perfect: they are expensive, toxic, and environmentally unsustainable. The synthesis of new catalysts based on iron – an abundant, cheap, and environmentally friendly metal – would address several of these serious limitations. Research in our lab has been focused on the development of iron-based homogenous hydrogenation catalysts that work through a ligand-assisted heterolytic cleavage mechanism. Our system involves a pyridone-based ligand-assisted heterolytic cleavage of dihydrogen. The focus of this presentation will be on the synthesis of eight pyridone ligands. We will also briefly discuss strategies being used to form the corresponding iron complexes.

Synthesis of pyridone-based ligands for homogenous hydrogenation iron-based catalysts

249th National Meeting (2015)

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