Abstract: Inclusion of “inorganic” p-block elements in functional materials and molecules has profound potential to significantly influence their properties. Despite the promise presented by these inclusions, methods to synthesise main group centred molecules are underdeveloped relative to their more carbon-centric cousins. Copper(I) catalysis has an enduring pedigree in facilitating controlled organic transformations, but has found less application in the rational assemblage of main-group element-element bonds. In this talk, I will discuss our contributions to the completion of a “p-block” of catalytically relevant copper-element bonds and the applications of such moieties in catalytic and stoichiometric transformations. These species provide a platform for exquisite control in the introduction of main group fragments into molecules which can provide both novel structures and mechanistic inspiration.

These transformations, amongst a huge range of other reactions, are able to make useful compounds by relying on the near-inevitable preference of copper for positive oxidation states. We now seek to subvert this paradigm and I will discuss our recent synthesis of a stable compound with a copper-magnesium bond which conforms to the formal oxidation state of Cu(-I). The Cu-Mg bond acts as a source of the cupride anion, transferring the copper-containing fragment to electrophilic s-, p-, and d-block atoms to make known and new copper complexes.

Bio: David Liptrot received his MChem (Hons) in Chemistry with Industrial Training from the University of Bath in 2011 and remained there to undertake a PhD on group 2 catalysis in the laboratory of Professor Mike Hill. After completing this in 2015 he took up a Lindemann Postdoctoral Fellowship with Professor Philip Power FRS (University of California, Davis, USA). In 2017 he returned to the University of Bath and in 2019 was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in 2022.