Grant: Idea to Innovation

The technology platform relates to green chemistry, in particular the potential for new catalysts in pharmaceutical and industrial processes. The platform consists of a catalyst that allows the use of silanes as reagents for the reduction of nitriles. This presents a number of advantages compared to the use of metal hydrides, including: - Ease of handling. Silanes are air stable. - Easy of synthesis. Many simple silanes are easily accessible by direct synthesis. - Value as intermediates. Silyl amines are valuable building blocks for organic synthesis, and silylimines (products of monohydrosilylation) are common synthetic intermediates for medicinal chemistry The platform also consists of a technology that permits the synthesis of specific chiral compounds via the creation of a novel series of planar aminoferrocene ligands. These ligands are converted to catalysts and are useful for the synthesis of a wide variety of enantioselective ligands, which in turn can catalyze a number of reactions. The aminoferrocene ligands themselves provide a number of potential advantages over current technologies, including: - The synthetic approach is simpler and more direct. - The ligand can be selectively prepared in either chiral form. - The process allows for selective synthesis of a variety of structurally diverse ligands, many of which are unattainable by other methods. The potential target market for the technology platform is in the synthesis of specialty chemicals and pharmaceutical compounds, many of which are chiral in nature, which is favourable for biological systems.