Research

Our research is broadly focussed on the use of main group elements in synthesis and catalysis. Abundant and inexpensive main group elements will have a significant role to play as sustainable alternatives to rare and expensive transition metals in chemical synthesis. While the chemistry of the main group elements is well established, their use as catalysts is a very new field. Recent advances in frustrated Lewis pair (FLP) chemistry have shown promising catalytic reactivity and the development of low-valent main group centres has shown interesting parallels with transition metal catalysts, although examples of catalytic turnover are still rare. We are investigating phosphenium cations as sterically and electronically tunable catalysts for small molecule activation and organic transformations with the long term goal of achieving catalytic turnover and loadings comparable with transition metal based catalysts. This work involves development of new ligand backbones for the phosphenium cations, reactivity studies and catalytic feasibility investigations. Furthermore, our group has interests in using phosphenium cations as non-innocent ligands in transition metal chemistry and as precursors for phosphorus-based radicals.

We are always interested in recruiting talented researchers to our group so please get in touch to discuss funding options as soon as is reasonable because applying for funding can be a long process. We are also interested in collaborative projects so if you like our chemistry and have an idea for a joint proposal please contact me.