Catalysis, Mechanisms and New Reactions for Sustainable Chemistry

Ronny Neumann, Department of Organic Chemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

Pulled by a societal need for new sustainable oxidative transformations and the use of renewable resources especially in the transportation sector, this presentation will describe how the development of new mechanistic paradigms involving the reactivity of polyoxometalates (anionic metal oxide clusters) has led to new reactions with low envrionmental signatures and new vistas towards the utilization of renewable resources. Among the reactions now possible we will emphasize how new carbon-carbon and carbon-oxygen bond cleavage reactions and insertion of oxygen into carbon-hydrogen and carbon-metal bonds can and hopefull will continue to bring about new scientifc solutions to the afore mentioned problems.