The present work shows that it is possible to ring-open cyclic carbonates with unprotected amino acids in water. Fine tuning of the reaction parameters made it possible to suppress the degree of hydrolysis in relation to aminolysis. This enabled the synthesis of functionally dense carbamates containing alkenes, carboxylic acids, alcohols and thiols after short reaction times at room temperature. When Glycine was used as the nucleophile in the ring-opening with four different five membered cyclic carbonates, containing a plethora of functional groups, the corresponding carbamates could be obtained in excellent yields (> 90%) without the need for any further purification. Furthermore, the orthogonality of the transformation was explored through ring-opening of divinylenecarbonate with unprotected amino acids equipped with nucleophilic side chains, such as serine and cysteine. In these cases the reaction selectively produced the desired carbamate, in 70 and 50% yield respectively. The synthetic design provides an inexpensive and scalable protocol towards highly functionalized building blocks that are envisioned to find applications in both the small and macromolecular arena.

Herein, a design of a biohybrid catalyst is described, consisting of Pd nanoparticles and a cross-linked network of aggregated lipase B enzyme of Candida antarctica (CalB CLEA) functioning as an active support for the Pd nanoparticles. Both entities of the hybrid catalyst showed good catalytic activity. The applicability was demonstrated in a one-pot reaction, where the Pd-catalyzed cycloisomerization of 4-pentynoic acid afforded a lactone that serves as an acyl donor in a subsequent selective enzymatic kinetic resolution of a set of sec-alcohols. The catalyst proved to be robust and could be recycled five times without a significant loss of activity.

The production of clean and sustainable energy is considered as one of the most urgent issues for our society. Mastering the oxidation of water to dioxygen is essential for the production of solar fuels. A study of the influence of the substituents on the catalytic activity of a series of mononuclear Ru complexes (2a-e) based on a tetradentate ligand framework is presented. At neutral pH, using [Ru(bpy)(3)](PF6)(3) (bpy=2,2'-bipyridine) as the terminal oxidant, a good correlation between the turnover frequency (TOF) and the Hammett sigma(meta) parameters was obtained. Additionally, a general pathway for the deactivation of Ru-based catalysts 2a-e during the catalytic oxidation of water through poisoning by carbon monoxide was demonstrated. These results highlight the importance of ligand design for fine-tuning the catalytic activity of water oxidation catalysts.

Artificial photosynthesis is an attractive strategy for converting solar energy into fuel. In this context, development of catalysts for oxidation of water to molecular oxygen remains a critical bottleneck. Herein, we describe the preparation of a well-defined nanostructured RuO2 catalyst, which is able to carry out the oxidation of water both chemically and photochemically. The developed heterogeneous RuO2 nanocatalyst was found to be highly active, exceeding the performance of most known heterogeneous water oxidation catalysts when driven by chemical or photogenerated oxidants.

Photocatalytic water oxidation represents a key process in conversion of solar energy into fuels and can be facilitated by the use of molecular transition metal-based catalysts. A novel straightforward approach for covalent linking of the catalytic units to other moieties is demonstrated by preparation of a dinuclear complex containing two [Ru(pdc)(pic)(3)]-derived units (pdc = 2,6-pyridinedicarboxylate, pic = 4-picoline). The activity of this complex towards chemical and photochemical oxidation of water was evaluated and a detailed insight is given into the interactions between the catalyst and acetonitrile, a common co-solvent employed to increase solubility of water oxidation catalysts. The solvent-induced transformations were studied by electrochemical and spectroscopic techniques and the relevant quantitative parameters were extracted.

Water oxidation is a fundamental step in artificial photosynthesis for solar fuels production. In this study, we report a single-site Ru-based water oxidation catalyst, housing a dicarboxylate-benzimidazole ligand, that mediates both chemical and light-driven oxidation of water efficiently under neutral conditions. The importance of the incorporation of the negatively charged ligand framework is manifested in the low redox potentials of the developed complex, which allows water oxidation to be driven by the mild one-electron oxidant [Ru(bpy)(3)](3+) (bpy = 2,2'-bipyridine). Furthermore, combined experimental and DFT studies provide insight into the mechanistic details of the catalytic cycle.

The synthesis of two molecular iron complexes, a dinuclear iron(III,III) complex and a nonanuclear iron complex, based on the di-nucleating ligand 2,2'-(2-hydroxy-5-methyl-1,3-phenylene)bis(1H-benzo[d]imidazole-4-carboxylic acid) is described. The two iron complexes were found to drive the oxidation of water by the one-electron oxidant [Ru(bpy)(3)](3+).

Herein, we describe the use of Pd nanoparticles immobilized on an amino-functionalized siliceous mesocellular foam for the catalytic oxidation of H2O. The Pd nanocatalyst proved to be capable of mediating the four-electron oxidation of H2O to O-2, both chemically and photochemically. The Pd nanocatalyst is easy to prepare and shows high chemical stability, low leaching, and recyclability. Together with its promising catalytic activity, these features make the Pd nanocatalyst of potential interest for future sustainable solar-fuel production.

Human society faces a fundamental challenge as energy consumption is projected to increase due to population and economic growth as fossil fuel resources decrease. Therefore the transition to alternative and sustainable energy sources is of the Utmost importance. The conversion of solar energy into chemical energy, by splitting H2O to generate molecular O-2 and H-2, could contribute to solving the global energy problem. Developing such a system will require the combination of several complicated processes, such as light-harvesting, charge separation, electron transfer, H2O oxidation, and reduction of the generated protons. The primary processes of charge separation and catalysis, which occur in the natural photosynthetic machinery, provide us with an excellent blueprint for the design of such systems. This Account describes our efforts to construct supramolecular assemblies capable of carrying out photoinduced electron transfer and to develop artificial water oxidation catalysts (WOCs). Early work in our group focused on linking a ruthenium chromophore to a manganese-based oxidation catalyst. When we incorporated a tyrosine unit into these supramolecular assemblies, we could observe fast intramolecular electron transfer from the manganese centers, via the tyrosine moiety, to the photooxidized ruthenium center, which clearly resembles the processes occurring in the natural system. Although we demonstrated multi-electron transfer in our artificial systems, the bottleneck proved to be the stability of the WOCs. Researchers have developed a number of WOCs, but the majority can only catalyze H2O oxidation in the presence of strong oxidants such as Ce-IV, which is difficult to generate photochemically. By contrast, illumination of ruthenium(II) photosensitizers in the presence of a sacrificial acceptor generates [Ru(bpy)(3)](3+)-type oxidants. Their oxidation potentials are significantly lower than that of Ce-IV, but our group recently showed that incorporating negatively charged groups into the ligand backbone could decrease the oxidation potential of the catalysts and, at the same time, decrease the potential for H2O oxidation. This permitted us to develop both ruthenium- and manganese-based WOCs that can operate under neutral conditions, driven by the mild oxidant [Ru(bpy)(3)](3+). Many hurdles to the development of viable systems for the production of solar fuels remain. However, the combination of important features from the natural photosynthetic machinery and novel artificial components adds insights into the complicated catalytic processes that are involved in splitting H2O.