Institut de Chimie Moléculaire et des Matériaux d'Orsay

Mixed hybridization systems : Towards the "after C60"

Axis 2 — Calixarene-supported catalysts

Associate researcher and collaborator : Cyril Martini (NOVECAL), Emmanuelle Schulz (ECM, ICMMO)

A new family of calixarenes, p-(benzyloxy)calixarenes, was found to be an interesting support for heterogeneous catalysis.

An easy and chromatography-free process was designed and optimized, allowing for the synthesis of well-defined polymetallic complexes using these calixarenes as a plateform. As an example, the following figure shows the synthesis of an octametallic Pd complex. This complex was found to be an active catalyst for Suzuki-Miyaura C-C couplings.

Interestingly, these polymetallic complexes exhibit a dual behavior. On the one hand, their good solubility in apolar solvents (THF, CHCl₃, etc…) allows for their full characterization by conventional analytical tools (NMR, MS, etc...). On the other hand, used in non solvents (ethanol, water), these compounds behave as completely insoluble species, with a very high catalytic activity that in some cases rivals the one of the best commercially available homogeneous catalysts.

These calixarene-supported metallic complexes are thus constituting a new family of catalysts, combining in one single specie the advantages of heterogeneous catalysis (low metal leaching, ease of recovery, etc…) with the ones of homogeneous catalysis (reactivity, well defined structure and metal loading, etc…).

Based on this technology, we recently (2018) launched the NOVECAL company.

Synthesis of octametallic calixarenes-supported palladium complexes

Last update on 11.13.2019