Covid-19 has exposed us to a new reality where the virtual world is much more important than before. In order to keep our students engaged at the frontiers of Organic Chemistry, we have organized a weekly webinar series that is a joint collaboration between the ÂÜÀòÉç (RSC) and the Organic Chemistry Division of the Brazilian Chemical Society (SBQ). It is an alternative way to share work and interact with potential collaborators.
The sections will alternate between Brazilian and international speakers, in some cases with the opportunity for a selected Brazilian early career researcher to engage with the audience by presenting their recent independent career developments.
Programme
11:30 Introductions and welcome11:35 Early Career presentation with Q&A
11:55 Main Speaker with Q&A
12:55 Closing remarks
13:00 Close
Speakers
Prof. Dr. Liane M. RossiUpdate on selective hydrogenations catalyzed by gold
The cooperative action of ligands on heterogeneous catalysts leading to the activation of small molecules, such as the H2 heterolytic splitting across the Au–ligand interface, has expanded the range of transformations achieved in gold catalysis. Nitrogen-containing ligands adsorbed on gold surface are able to promote a favorable interface to activate H2 heterolytically, which was understood as a frustrated Lewis pair (FLP) surface, improving gold’s activity. The need of a large excess of amine (100:1 ligand:Au) encouraged us to look for other family of ligands that bind strongly but do not poison the gold surface. We recently found that phosphorous-containing ligands were also able to boost the catalytic activity of Au NPs for a range of important reduction reactions. Due to intrinsic properties of gold, C-C double bonds were preserved while other functional groups are reduced. In this talk we will discuss the generality of cooperative catalysis using gold-ligand systems under study in our research group for selective hydrogenations using H2 and also for transfer hydrogenation reactions.
Prof Dr Marcelo Oliveira Rodrigues
Nanotechnology and Sustainable Agriculture: Challenges and Solutions
Agriculture is historically the most stable and important sector which along of the several centuries has been responsible to provide raw materials for food and feed industries. With the Green Revolution of 1960, the global food supply has been hugely enhanced, because agriculture was benefited by a diversity of technological innovations introduced by the biotechnology and chemical sectors. However, the high dependence of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers post Green Revolution have been accompanied by a detrimental impact on ecosystem and public health. Nowadays, almost the half of crop production arise from 16% of irrigated agricultural fields, nevertheless, this typical practice can contribute to turn soils acids, accelerate the rate of leach out of soil minerals, or caused salt build-ups. All these factors will result in an eventual abandon of those fields due to the rapid soil degradation. It is unquestionable that the development of a sustainable agriculture is completely dependent of innovations in techniques and procedures, in fact, this can be considered as one of the most important paradigms to be overcome by the current generation, since, hunger and degraded ecosystem have become a severe threat to human health and the civilization. In this context, nanotechnology emerges as a potential solution to overmatch the conventional agriculture drawbacks, since it would be still able to enhance the productivity concomitant to the reducing of the environmental impact. Despite of evident potentialities, nanotechnology in agriculture applications are still marginal in comparison with other industrial sectors. The crescent number of publications and patents related to this theme still represent less than 5% of the kindred field of energy and materials and 1.5% that of nanomedicine. In this presentation will be presented the potentialities of some nanomaterials in agriculture and these sophisticated materials can contribute for a sustainable food production.