Developments in chiral phosphonium salt preparation and transformations, hydrophosphination, and chemical oscillations
This PhD research explores new ways to control how chemical reactions proceed and which products they form. A major part of the work focuses on chiral phosphorus-containing compounds. Chirality describes molecules that can exist in two mirror-image forms, much like left and right hands. Controlling which form is produced is important because the two forms can behave differently in chemical and biological systems.
New catalytic methods were developed to prepare chiral phosphonium salts and related phosphorus-containing compounds with high control over their three-dimensional structure. The research also shows that these phosphonium salts can be activated by visible light to generate highly reactive intermediates while partly preserving the stereochemical information originally introduced into the molecule. This opens new possibilities for using chiral phosphorus compounds as building blocks in synthesis.
The thesis also investigates a very different type of chemical control: oscillating reactions. In these systems, the concentration of a catalyst repeatedly rises and falls over time. By coupling such an oscillator to other reactions, the work demonstrates that these concentration changes can influence both how much product is formed and which product is preferred.Together, these studies show different strategies for achieving greater control over chemical reactivity, selectivity and molecular structure.