Eliminating toxic and expensive heavy metals in the chemical industry: A new publication from the University of Würzburg Chemistry points the way forward.
The team led by chemistry professor Holger Braunschweig at the University of Würzburg is investigating the 'metal-mimetic' properties of main group elements such as boron. They have shown that under certain conditions, boron can mimic the reaction behaviour of metals without being toxic or as expensive as metals.
This is the background to a new publication by the Braunschweig group in the journal Nature Chemistry. The article shows that boron can also form so-called π complexes with olefins, which are similar in their properties and behaviour to the complexes of transition metals with olefins. The latter compounds are intermediates in many large-scale catalytic processes in industry.
Inspiration for Other Researchers
'Our discovery opens up a whole new area of the periodic table for π coordination chemistry - including the possibility of using main group elements as industrial catalysts for functionalisation reactions of unsaturated hydrocarbons,' says Holger Braunschweig.
The boron-olefin π complexes were synthesised by postdocs Dr Maximilian Michel and Dr Marco Weber. The Würzburg chemists hope that their discovery will inspire other researchers to push the boundaries of main group chemistry further and find additional applications for boron or other main group elements.
Replacing Heavy Metals With Main Group Elements
'In the long term, our main goal is to replace toxic and costly heavy metals in industrial processes with main group elements,' says Holger Braunschweig.
Next, the team wants to modify the boron-olefin π complexes so that their behaviour is even more similar to that of the known metal complexes.
Partners and Sponsors
The Würzburg team published these results together with the groups led by Professor Arumugam Jayaraman from the University of Nevada in Las Vegas (USA) and Professor Alfredo Vargas from the University of Sussex in Brighton (UK).
The work was funded by the German Research Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Publication
Olefin π-coordination chemistry at low-oxidation-state boron. Nature Chemistry, 19 September 2025, DOI 10.1038/s41557-025-01952-3
