Research Projects

Iron is a non-precious, biocompatible, versatile, sustainable, environmentally friendly, economical, and less-toxic metal that lowers the risk of impurities in products produced by iron catalysis. However, homogeneous iron catalysts are often avoided on an industrial scale due to low thermal stability and difficulties in recovery, reusability, separation, and purification. Currently, only a small number of heterogeneous iron catalysts are reported and explored for organic functionalization. The project aims to develop efficient, stable, and sustainable iron-based heterogeneous catalysts for various organic transformations and practical and cost-effective processes for effective heterogenization of homogeneous catalysts for industrial-level applications. The proposed project explores new strategies for designing heterogeneous iron(II) catalysts with homogeneous iron(II) complexes of ligands with an extended aromatic pi-system. The project involves the synthesis of various tridentate ligands by molecular engineering of substituents, lengthening the anchoring aromatic chain, and stabilizing the ligands with three to four-aromatic rings. The iron complexes will be immobilized on solid supports, such as functionalized silica and carbohydrate-based biopolymers, and further immobilized on magnetic hybrid core-shell (inorganic-organic) types of supports. The catalytic performance of the newly synthesized heterogeneous iron catalysts will be investigated in C-C coupling reactions, TH of carbonyl compounds, imines, nitro compounds, and transfer hydrogenative condensation of nitroarenes with alcohols. The objectives of the project include synthesis and characterization of multiidentate ligands and their iron(II) complexes, synthesis and characterization of heterogeneous iron-based catalysts, and applications of heterogeneous iron-based catalysts in organic synthesis.