Amber Davis
Chiral Dendritic Catalysts

Project Overview

Amber (M. Chem – York) developed a series of tren based dendrimers as catalysts for the nitroaldol (Henry) reaction. She investigated the effect of encapsulating the catalytically competent basic amine group at the centre of the dendrimer. She found that the dendritic shell tuned the selectivity of the catalyst as well as having an impact on the rate of the reaction. In this way, these dendrimers mimic enzymes, in which the active site can be encapsulated and controlled by the surrounding peptidic superstructure. These catalytic studies were carried out using NMR methods. The results of this project were published in Org. Lett.