Immobilization of a Molecular Pd Catalyst

Abstract: In the past decade the term Green Chemistry has steered the direction of chemical indus- try and research. Green Chemistry is the idea of reducing environmental impacts of chemical reactions by lowering the energy consumption and reducing the amount of by-products. Nearly all industrial chemical processes use a catalyst in order to make their reaction more effecient. This study examines two different systems both developed to combine the aspects of Green Chemisty to the industry of catalysis through supported homogeneous catalysis. The overall goal is to simplify the separation of the catalyst from the reaction vessel through heterogenization and simultaneously increase the selectivity of the catalyst to reduce by-product creation. One system sees to determine the bonding geometry of a catalyst linker molecule on a silicon oxide model system through STM measurements in order to gain a deeper understanding of the im- mobilization of the catalyst. A crucial first step in inducing the heterogenization of the catalyst. The second system sees to examine the reusability of an already synthesised and immobilized polymer-embedded catalyst with increased selectivity by observing structural changes of the catalyst-complexes by SEM measurements. Due to a contamination problem in the STM cham- ber the linker molecule could not be dosed on the silicon oxide surface but important remarks were done regarding the preparation of the silicon oxide for future use. Some structural changes are observed on the polymer-embedded catalysts after consecutive reaction cycles, however, due to the small sample size of the study no major conclusions could be drawn.