Using electricity to create compounds for pharmaceuticals, other chemicals

What do gunpowder, penicillin and Teflon have in common? They were inventions that took the world by storm, but they were all created by mistake.

Researchers used electricity to develop a tool that may make it easier and cheaper to make compounds used in pharmaceuticals and other natural products. This invention also joins the ranks of the many unforeseen innovations that have come before it.

A catalyst that could be activated by electricity was one of the first things the team wanted to do.

Their study suggests a general guideline for taking inexpensive and widely abundant materials, and using them to create complex compounds that wouldn't normally work together. Reducing the steps and waste of the chemical process could allow researchers to create more valuable products.

The power of electricity was used to facilitate their chemical reactions in the lab, instead of using high-energy reagents or added substances.

There is a push in the industrial sector to move toward the use of electrochemistry to foster chemical change because of the sustainable nature of electricity.

We have total control over how we run these reactions, which is why it is an attractive way to do chemistry.

The research has applications in medicine and in the creation of products like pesticides or herbicides. It took a lot of hard work and patience to get right.

It took three months of testing different combinations of Additives, until all of a sudden something worked and it worked great.

The nickel atom was chosen as the catalyst for the tool because precious metals can cost a lot. In chemistry, catalysts are responsible for increasing or decreasing the rate of the chemical reaction as they make and create bonds.

Being able to use catalysts that are very inexpensive, like nickel, is beneficial to everyone in the entire community. nickel is a cheap alternative for businesses that produce pharmaceuticals, plastics and polymers, and it also keeps the cost of food products down. If farmers had to pay more for the agrichemicals that help create, the price of their crop would go up.

The team will work with a multinational pharmaceutical company to try and create other products using more difficult reactions and more complex molecule. With their latest discovery, Sevov said that he is optimistic that their work will create brand new avenues in the field of chemistry.

We are going to take advantage of this really reactive intermediate and see how far we can go with it.

More information: Taylor B. Hamby et al, Controlling Ni redox states by dynamic ligand exchange for electroreductive Csp3–Csp2 coupling, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abo0039 Citation: Using electricity to create compounds for pharmaceuticals, other chemicals (2022, May 3) retrieved 3 May 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-05-electricity-compounds-pharmaceuticals-chemicals.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.