PhotoOrganocatalysis: Development of new environmentally-friendly methods for the synthesis of compounds for the pharmaceutical and chemical industry

Our target is to develop a new family of organic compounds, in the presence of visible light (from household lamps), will be employed successfully as photocatalysts for a variety of organic transformations of interest to the pharmaceutical and chemical industry. Organocatalysis is considered one of the most modern fields in Organic Chemistry and. it has become the third major area of asymmetric catalysis along with transition-metal catalysis and biocatalysis. For this reason, organocatalysis constitutes a valuable new tool for the synthesis of enantiopure molecules like pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. The last 5 years, a new trend is observed in research, where photocatalysis is used, especially the use of photocatalysts based on ruthenium and iridium. The great importance of organocatalysis, not only in academia, but also its potential for industrial applications, have urged us in proposing the combination of Organocatalysis with Photocatalysis for the generation of a new trend in Catalysis, PhotoOrganocatalysis. 

This project was evaluated and funded as part of the Foundation’s effort to support research teams with all their members being under 40 years old.