Synthesis and Catalytic Potential of Rare Earth Heterobimetallic Complexes

摘要

A novel route to chiral and achiral 2-aryloxazolyl compounds, building upon work already extant in the group has allowed for the development of an alternative route to oxazoline ligands. This route allows for the previous ease of scalability and high yields whilst vastly reducing reaction times and improving the purification procedure. This new method is significantly gentler using ambient conditions throughout much of the procedure and is therefore synthetically much simpler. The total reaction time has also been reduced allowing for the production of cleaner materials, faster and in analogous yields. These ligands possess many characteristics that would make them ideal for catalysis especially with high oxidation state metals.udWe have demonstrated the effective anhydrous self-assembly of several heterobimetallic complexes using these ligands with Ln3+ and alkali metals (M) such as lithium or sodium of the general formula Mx[Ln(L)x+3]. These have been fully characterised and their catalytic potential demonstrated with the nitroaldol reaction. It is hoped that through this initial study into the catalytic potential of these complexes we can gain insight into the catalytic pathway which will lead to further optimisation of these catalysts.