Abstract:
Aluminium is an attractive metal for catalysis due to its high abundance and low cost compared to platinum group metals. Previous examples of aluminium catalysts include aluminium methyl complexes for the polymerisation of alkenes and aluminium hydrides for the catalytic hydroboration of alkenes and alkynes.
The ligand environment of a metal is critical in determining its reactivity and effectiveness as a catalyst, as proven in transition metal chemistry. The majority of ligands used to stabilise aluminium complexes contain exclusively hard donors such as nitrogen. Conversely, the use of soft donor atoms such as phosphorus in such complexes is relatively unexplored.
In this talk, I will describe the synthesis, structure and reactivity of aluminium complexes stabilised by mixed N,P-donor ligands. These complexes show flexibility in their coordination modes, which is rarely exhibited by main group compounds, but is necessary to achieve catalysis in a transition metal-like manner.
