Disputas - Master of Science Martin Pettersen

Master of Science Martin Pettersen will Friday March 8th, 2024, at 12:15 hold his disputas for the PhD degree in Science. The title of his thesis is:

"Exploring the Potential of CO2: Enantioselective C-C Bond Formation"

Summary:

CO₂ is a renewable source of carbon that has not yet been properly utilized. The reason for this is mostly due to its kinetic and thermodynamic stability. The potential renewability of CO₂, coupled with environmental concerns, has motivated scientists worldwide to develop new artificial carbon cycles for chemical fixation of CO₂. Unfortunately, the pronounced inertness of CO₂ allows only the synthesis of a range of C1 molecules, often with poor selectivity. These limitations also make enantioselective carbon-carbon (C-C) bond-forming utilizing carbon dioxide (CO₂) difficult to achieve. Therefore, there has been relatively few examples of enantioselective C-C bondforming reactions reported in the literature. The primary objective of my work is to develop enantioselective C-C bond-forming reactions using CO₂, with a particular focus on metal-catalyzed enantioselective incorporation of CO₂. The first catalytic enantioselective hydrocarboxylation was reported in 2016 by Mikami and colleagues. We became interested in the mechanistic details of this transformation and set out to provide computational and experimental insights, on the transformation. The enantioselective boracarboxylation has not yet been explored and is an interesting transformation to produce novel drug precursors. With an interest in enantioselective carboxylations, our group set out to develop an enantioselective method for boracarboxylation of styrenes. As of writing this thesis, the boracarboxylation is currently restricted to alkynes and styrenes. We therefore aimed to expand the applicability of the boracarboxylation to allenes. With the boracarboxylation being similar to hydroboration, we started our study optimizing from known to work hydroboration conditions with CO₂ instead of a proton source.

Evaluation committee:

• Professor Brian V. Popp, Department of Chemistry, West Virginia University, USA (1. Opponent)
• Professor Nina Kann, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden (2. Opponent)
• Professor Jørn H. Hansen, Department of Chemistry, UiT (intern member and leader of the committee)

Supervisors:

• Professor Annette Bayer, Department of Chemistry, UiT (main supervisor)
• Researcher Ashot Gevorgyan, Department of Chemistry, UiT
• Professor Tore Lejon, Department of Chemistry, UiT

Streaming site:

Thesis