In this project, funded by the Chemical Catalysis program of the Chemistry Division, Professor Amir H. Hoveyda of the Department of Chemistry at Boston College and his research team of postdoctoral fellow, graduate scholars and undergraduate students, as well as some high school students, design and develop Ru-based catalysts that are easily accessible, robust and stable and yet promote an efficient and selective manner one of the most important sets of transformations in chemistry: olefin metathesis. Their exciting catalysts are licensed by a company (XiMo, AG), which develops protocols for large scale (multi-ton) production of polymers or pharmaceuticals. One of the most, if not the most, widely used catalyst set for olefin metathesis, was discovered under the auspices of the present NSF-funded project (popularly referred to as "Hoveyda-Grubbs catalysts").
The project facilitates the development of environmentally benign catalytic reactions that convert cheap and common unsaturated hydrocarbons and other simple organic molecules to those that are much more valuable and can be used to address a variety of compelling problems in human health care as well as improvement of the quality of life. The Hoveyda team develops catalysts that promote olefin metathesis processes efficiently and, importantly, with exceptional levels of stereoselectivity; that is, in reactions where a mixture of products are feasible, their catalysts manage just to produce one form. This goal is important for several reasons. Firstly, different isomers possess entirely different shapes (one is U- and the other is Z-shaped) and thus induce different responses in a biological setting or generate materials with completely different properties. Secondly, separation of isomeric mixtures, which is what is generally produced with many of the existing catalysts, is not only costly, difficult and time consuming, it leads to generation of significant amounts of waste.
