The next Trends in Organic Chemistry meeting, TOC, takes place on the 6th of December. One of the speakers is Professor Lutz Ackermann from the Institute for Organic Biomolecular Chemistry at the Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen in Germany. He is also the founder and Director of the Wöhler Research Institute for Sustainable Chemistry.

The topic of the TOC2021 meeting is electrochemistry and Lutz Ackermann will focus on the work within electrocatalysis which is performed in his lab.

– We are primarily interested in methods for sustainable chemistry and unravelling new strategies for synthesis. One of these strategies is electrosynthesis, he says.

One of the advantages of electrosynthesis is that it makes it possible to produce different molecules using renewable energy like solar and wind power, thereby avoiding the use of toxic oxidants or reductants, and reducing the formation of undesirable byproducts.

In one of the projects at Lutz Ackermann’s lab, the aim has been to cleave bonds between carbon and hydrogen atoms. Traditionally, costly transmission metals have been used for this type of catalysis, but the lab is exploring the use of earth-abundant metals such as manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel and copper instead.

– C-H-bonds are everywhere in a molecule, so it is difficult to select a specific bond to modify. It is also extra difficult since these bonds are very strong, he says.

The Lutz Ackermann lab has several ongoing collaborations with pharmaceutical companies, with the aim to provide them with better and more sustainable methods for the identification and production of pharmaceutical drugs.

The lab is also working on techniques to make new use of captured carbon dioxide.

How did you develop an interest in electrochemistry?

– I come from Kiel in the northern part of Germany where we have a lot of wind power and I always wanted to work with wind energy and use it for something specific.

Who should listen to your talk?

– The audience should ideally include academic researchers who are interested in organic synthesis, but also people from chemical companies or the pharmaceutical industry as well as people who are fans of electrocatalysis.

TOC2021 is a hybrid meeting, which will take place at the IVA Conference Center in Stockholm on December 6. The registration for physical attendance has now closed. However, it is still possible to register for to attend the meeting digitally. Read more about the meeting here: Electrochemistry in Organic Synthesis – Trends in Organic Chemistry (toc2021.se)