Welcome to the website of the Hengstberger Symposium Breaking Paradigms: Main-Group Elements in Redox Catalysis.

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The symposium “Breaking Paradigms: Main-Group Elements in Redox Catalysis” aims to bring chemists from inorganic and organic chemistry together to discuss current challenges and future directions in the field of main-group redox-catalysis.

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​Catalyst research is essential to increase efficiency and sustainability in industrial processes. Aiming to replace toxic, expensive, and non-abundant late transition metals in catalysis, researchers around the world have started to demonstrate the potential of main-group elements – abundant, often non-toxic alternatives from the p-block (Groups 13–18) – to serve as the basis for next-generation redox catalysts. However, this has raised a central question: How can we design, control, and apply the redox properties of p-block elements to develop new catalytic systems for sustainable chemical synthesis? 

 

The redox activity of main-group elements differs substantially across the different groups in the p-block. While low-valent early p-block elements of groups 13 and 14 are studied extensively as strong reductants, the high-valent late p-block elements (e.g. group 17 and group 18) are under investigation due to their reactivity as strong oxidants. The symposium aims to create a space where experts from different fields can identify common challenges and connect their approaches. Which new resources can we use? How do we design new complexes to achieve redox-cycling? Which strategies can be used across different element groups? How do we enable translation of new processes into large scale, real-world applications? 

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We are very grateful for the support through the Klaus-Georg and Sigrid-Hengstberger-Preis and the German Research Foundation (DFG).