2016-12-2, Andérez-Fernández, María, Vogt, Lydia K., Fischer, Steffen, Zhou, Wei, Jiao, Haijun, Garbe, Marcel, Elangovan, Saravanakumar, Junge, Kathrin, Junge, Henrik, Ludwig, Ralf, Beller, Matthias

For the first time, structurally defined manganese pincer complexes catalyze the dehydrogenation of aqueous methanol to hydrogen and carbon dioxide, which is a transformation of interest with regard to the implementation of a hydrogen and methanol economy. Excellent long-term stability was demonstrated for the Mn-PNPiPr catalyst, as a turnover of more than 20 000 was reached. In addition to methanol, other important hydrogen carriers were also successfully dehydrogenated.

2022, Hu, Yuya, Sang, Rui, Vroemans, Robby, Mollaert, Guillaume, Razzaq, Rauf, Neumann, Helfried, Junge, Henrik, Franke, Robert, Jackstell, Ralf, Maes, Bert U. W., Beller, Matthias

Diesters are of fundamental importance in the chemical industry and are used for many applications, e.g. as plasticizers, surfactants, emulsifiers, and lubricants. Herein, we present a straightforward and efficient method for the selective synthesis of diesters via palladium-catalyzed direct carbonylation of di- or polyols with readily available alkenes. Key-to-success is the use of a specific palladium catalyst with the “built-in-base” ligand L16 providing esterification of all alcohols and a high n/iso ratio. The synthesized diesters were evaluated as potential plasticizers in PVC films by measuring the glass transition temperature (Tg) via differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).