Professor, Department of Chemistry
Coordination Polymers, Molecular Metal hydroxides, NHC Based Multi-site Coordinating Ligands, Ionic Liquids.
FB-423,
Department of Chemistry
IIT Kanpur,
Kanpur 208016
Coordination and organometallic Chemistry.
PhD (2003), University of Goettingen, Germany.
Lecturer, IIT Kanpur, 2004
Assistant Professor, IIT Kanpur, 2007
Catalysis plays an important role in life cycle. The natural catalysts present in our system, not only involves in the chemical transformation, but they are also recycled. The heterogeneous catalysts are good for organic transformation, but high quantity of catalysts is used and it has poor selectivity. In contrast the homogeneous catalysts are very good but suffer poor recyclability. Thus there is a great amount of thrust given to develop the heterogenization of homogeneous catalysts and as a result new supported catalysts with well defined positions of supporting units are being developed. Thus this work involves three broad area of Inorganic chemistry, namely
(i) coordination polymers
(ii) Organometallics, and
(ii) homo-and/heterogeneous catalysis.
Besides we want to study the materialistic aspects of the support and house the important materials inside the cavity. Therefore, in the first part, we are involved in developing the supports which is essential to
(a) incorporate molecular catalysts
(b) carryout reactions inside the channels and
(c) the study of material applications in the area of sorption and luminescence.
In this regard, we have chosen heterocyclic ring containing linkers, such as pyridine and thiophene, imidazolium ions to prepare coordination polymers with different metal ions. Compared to the other heterocyclic ring systems or other two electron donors, NHCs are one of the versatile ligands used in the molecular catalysts for the organic transformation (organometallic chemistry and catalysis). In the catalysts preparation, understanding the electronic property of NHCs are necessary. Therefore, in recent years, we have been also engaged in the synthesis and reactivity of NHCs/ modified NHCs, which are precursors for the linkers in the preparation of CPs, apart from understanding the electronic nature of NHCs. These expertises will be used later for the preparation of supported catalysts.