GDCh-Kolloquium - Professor Dr. Patrick Holland

Breaking it and fixing it: new chemistry with nitrogen

Atmospheric N₂ is a cheap, abundant resource with great potential for energy storage and chemical escribe the challenges and opportunities of nitrogen fixation, as well as my students' disynthesis, but it is difficult to convert it into other compounds ("fixing" nitrogen). This seminar will dscoveries of how to break the N–N bond of N₂ using homogeneous transition-metal complexes. In addition to new catalysts for producing ammonia, we have identified a new mechanism for sequential C-H activation and N-N activation to create C-N bonds. Detailed mechanistic studies reveal a cyclic reaction, which gives a route from atmospheric N₂ and petroleum-derived arenes to substituted anilines. This is an important step toward preparing useful chemicals using air as a starting material.