Forschungsgruppen

„Redox-Active Metal Complexes: Control of Reactivity via Molecular Architecture“

Speaker: Prof. Dr. K. Meyer

Number of project leaders: 18, number of coworkers: 35

Participating institutions:

• Institute of Inorganic Chemistry
• Institute of Organic Chemistry
• Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry
• Institute of Physics III
• Computer-Chemie-Centrum

Areas of Research:

Redox reactions are a universal type of chemical reactions. Redox active metal complexes are indispensable for the most of these reactions. The goal of the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) is the systematic elucidation of these important elementary reactions and their control via the structure of the participating metal complexes.
The research projects are divided into three areas:

Group A: Molecular architectures for molecule activation

Group B: Molecular architectures for charge transfer

Group C: Physical and theoretical quantification of functionality

As a first step, catalyst architectures that are able to coordinate and activate small molecules and are in turn capable of transferring electric charge will be developed. Studies on chemical reactivity, kinetic mechanistic investigations and physical measurements will elucidate quantitatively the extent of molecule-activation and the amount of charge-transfer. Quantum mechanical calculations will provide microscopic details that will lead to the construction of better molecular architectures and catalytic metal complexes.