Nickel catalyst unlocks green synthesis route

Reactions that form bonds between carbon atoms are among the most important in the chemical industry’s toolkit: they are essential for transforming small, simple building block molecules into the complex structures of compounds found in nature and of pharmaceuticals. However, they often require catalysts containing costly precious metals like platinum or palladium, or transforming the starting material into a more reactive form by adding halogen atoms, that can lead to polluting byproducts.

Chemists at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have now developed a synthetic approach that forms a carbon-carbon bond between usually-inactive esters and boron-containing hydrocarbons, using nickel as a catalyst.

Nickel is a very common and relatively low cost catalyst used for many industrial reactions with organic molecules. The reactions the team has targeted are called cross-coupling reactions, in which two molecules with reactive groups are made to join together, eliminating the reactive groups and forming a bond between the carbon atoms to which the groups were originally attached.