Research Projects

Heterocyclic compounds have gained significant interest in organic synthesis due to their widespread applications in pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and natural products. The nitrile functionality is important in functional group-oriented organic synthesis due to its existence in various pharmaceutically active molecules and their easy conversion into various functionalities. Traditional cyanation reactions required harsh reaction conditions and metal waste. Transition metal-catalyzed cyanation reactions have been developed using transition metals and metallic cyanides. However, various organic cyanide sources have been investigated to reduce the risk of hazardous metal cyanides. The Chan-Evans-Lam CEL coupling has been discovered as a cost-effective alternative for efficient Chan-Lam cross-coupling reactions. The proposed PhD work aims to develop non-toxic nitrile surrogates for the synthesis of aryl nitriles and their one-pot conversion to azaheterocycles. The research will focus on designing non-toxic organic nitrile surrogates, optimizing reaction conditions, developing efficient catalytic systems, combining coupling transformations with one-pot sequential cascade/tandem reactions, characterizing the synthesized molecules using analytical techniques, and evaluating the biological activity of newly synthesized heterocycles.