Chemists are designing new catalysts that grip and break carbon-hydrogen bonds in fossil-fuel molecules, aiming to turn cheap, abundant alkanes into valuable materials and pharmaceuticals. Around 75% of all chemicals in manufacturing rely on catalysts, and the UK chemical sector generates roughly 21% of GDP, so improving how these reactions work has direct economic and environmental stakes. Current catalysts often struggle to activate the strong, stable bonds in alkanes, forcing industry to use energy-intensive processes or start from more reactive—and less sustainable—feedstocks. This fellowship targets that gap by developing metal sigma-complexes, a class of reactive organometallic compounds that can selectively manipulate these stubborn bonds. If successful, the work could enable more efficient production of polyolefins (plastics) from fossil resources, create new types of polymeric materials, and streamline the synthesis of fine chemicals such as pharmaceutical intermediates. The programme is both fundamental and applied: it pushes the limits of what reactive organometallic compounds can do while aiming for real-world catalytic applications. No immediate consumer product will emerge, but the chemistry could quietly reshape how industry manufactures everyday plastics and medicines.
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The manipulation of chemical bonds to provide materials and chemicals of intrinsic value in the most energy and resource efficient way is at the heart of Chemistry. Catalysis is a cornerstone of this endeavour, contributing directly to the chemical industry in the UK (it is estimated that ~ 75% of all chemicals require catalysts in their manufacture), a manufacturing sector that generates ~21% of UK GDP. Transition metal-based systems play a central role in catalysis, often offering mechanistically distinct routes to molecules that could not be made by other means. The molecules thus produced may be of very high value/low volume, e.g. an intermediate in sophisticated synthetic route to a pharmaceutical; or lower relative value/high volume, e.g. polyolefins from fossil-resource derived hydrocarbons. The design, construction and implementation of new catalysts that offer step-changes in chemical manufacturing capability, in concert with improving the fundamental understanding of how chemical bonds can be manipulated, is thus central to: sustainable manufacturing, energy and resource security, and healthcare. This Fellowship will allow for the study of two highly complementary strands of catalysis discovery, development and application, that capitalise on exciting emerging results from the Weller group. The scientific aim of the Fellowship is to develop, and harness in real-world applications, the fundamental and catalytic chemistry associated with the synthesis, characterisation and utilisation of metal sigma-complexes. It is both fundamental and applied in scope, broad in its vision, and will allow for the opening up of new areas in organometallic chemistry and main-group materials chemistry. Such challenging goals would have been unreasonable until very recently, but the breakthroughs in the applicant's laboratories set the scene for these significant future developments in the field. The programme will push back the limits of what can be achieved in the synthesis of reactive organometallic compounds, their use in catalysis for the manufacture of new, and exciting, types of polymeric materials and the efficient utilisation of fossil-resource derived chemical feedstocks (alkanes) and catalysts for fine chemicals synthesis (C-H activation).
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