Two European research projects (ERC-PoC)

Recently researchers of the IQCC and research group QBIS-Cat of the University of Girona have been successful with the ERC Proof of Concept program. This program is directly related to their ERC Starting Grant projects and tries to prepare the results obtained in these to bring them to market.

In the case of the “Copper Catalysis Applications” Xavi Ribas intends to enhance the characteristics of catalysis of organic transformations based on copper. In the research lab the team has developed protocols that allow selectively coupling reactions for carbon-nitrogen and oxygen-carbon bonds. The ERC-PoC project will explore the possibility of bringing this new technology to a commercial phase. In general, copper is an abundant and economical metal, which enables the development of new technologies that can be aimed at the design of more sustainable chemical synthesis.

On the other hand, the “Biologically inspired chiral oxidation catalysts for commercial applications of fine chemistry” project by Miquel Costas will study how chiral catalysts may be used to introduce oxygen atoms into achiral organic molecules, in an easy and cheap manner. The project intends to do a scale-up of the synthetic methods to the level of (pre-)commercial level that is needed by the fine chemical industry. Hence, it will lead to the commercial availability of a portfolio of chiral catalysts based on earth abundant metals with applications in chemical industry.