Basker Sundararaju

Catalysis, the science of accelerating chemical transformations developed significantly in the last few decades and still continues to attract the attention of chemists for its major contribution in the synthesis of more complex molecules in fewer steps. In a relative term, we strongly believe that without catalysts and catalytic technologies, the access to all of the materials needed for our daily lives would not be possible or suffer in quality.

Having said that till today, many chemical reactions was carried out through classical organic synthesis, whichincludes selective functionalization such as nitration; halogenation, cyanation, etc. often generate several tons of hazardous waste. With these facts, there is a need for most innovative and versatile catalytic methods for environmentally sustainable process. In particular, the goal of sustainable process is to develop technologies that use fewer raw materials and less energy, which maximize the use of renewable resources, and minimize or eliminate the use of hazardous chemicals. Of late, it's well known that organometallic chemistry plays a vital role in the development of green and sustainable environment, one of the important features of catalysis.

In light of these requirements, our research program concentrates on transition metals as a means of achieving efficient catalytic system for activation of carbon-hydrogen, carbon-carbon and carbon heteroatom. By understanding the reaction processes, ligand properties and their co-ordination ability towards various transition metals to effect a desired transformation has distinct advantage to perform reaction in regio, stereo and enantioselective manner. Further, the resulted new methodologies will be applied in targeted molecular synthesis. Hence our research theme will be comprises of appropriate ligand design and their complexation with transition metals with aim towards targeted catalytic reactions. Upon finding the new reactivity, we further will probe into the reaction pathways, isolation of active species and their mechanism.