School of Engineering and Science - Jacobs University

Chapter 3
Current thesis in the EU-COST project:
aims of the work
3.1 Introduction and goals setting
The idea to use metal nanoclusters modified with chiral ligands is a much promising
strategy in research and development of enantioselective catalysts. In fact, making
nanoparticles stabilized with chiral ligands it is possible to reach maximum chiral
coverage of the metal surface, that is very important for obtaining high
enantioselectivity. Since Pt and Pd (generally alumina or silica supported) were found
to be the best metals for heterogeneous enantioselective hydrogenation, in this thesis,
we focused on the chiral modification of the surface of Pt and Pd nanoclusters.
The current thesis is a part of the “EU COST D24 WORKING GROUP 7
D24/0007/02” working project, which besides International University Bremen (Prof.
R. Richards) also involves research groups from the Marseille University (Prof. G.
Buono), Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris Institute (Prof. J.-P. Genet),
University of Ljubljana (Prof. M. Kocevar) and University of Bucharest (Prof. V. I.
Parvulescu).
The working scheme (Fig. 3-1) shows that the groups from Paris and Marseille provide
us with specific chiral ligands (synphos and quiphos with quiphos-spider, respectively).
At the International University Bremen we have prepared Pt and Pd nanoclusters
modified with obtained from our colleagues (and purchased from Fluka and Aldrich)
chiral ligands for chiral modification of them on the surface of metal nanoclusters. The
groups in Paris, Ljubljana and Bucharest study catalytic activity (as well as
enantioselectivity) over obtained samples in corresponding reactions. The details about
their work can be found in the description of the EU-COST project [163] and from the
corresponding research groups.
25