Project Details
London Dispersion as a design element to control molecular structures and chemical reactivity
Applicant
Professor Dr. Peter R. Schreiner
Subject Area
Organic Molecular Chemistry - Synthesis and Characterisation
Term
from 2015 to 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 271108007
The goal of the project is to improve our conceptual understanding of London dispersion (LD) interactions. We strive to achieve this using synthetic, spectroscopic, and computational techniques as follows: a) Synthesis and detailed structural characterization of the re-discovered Gomberg-system (i.e. dimers of trityl derivatives) that are only made possible by using LD interactions; b) determination of a relative scale of dispersion energy donors (DEDs) utilizing "molecular balances" based on hydrocarbons only (cyclooctatetraene and bifluorenylidene derivatives); c) examination of the effects of lipophilic groups (i.e. DEDs) in oligopeptide catalysts as well as substrates in organocatalytic transformations (acylation, Dakin-West reaction). Ideally, the concepts lead to improved ways of directing reactivity and selectivity, novel materials, and the improvement of high-quality quantum mechanical methods for increasingly larger systems. A good part of our work is directly connected to projects of other expert groups from theory and spectroscopy.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes