Mónica H. Pérez-Temprano

Over the last decades, transition-metal-catalyzed C–H activation has emerged as a powerful tool for the synthesis of organic scaffolds. Until recently, the majority of these transformations were achieved employing noble metals, such as palladium or rhodium. However, in the recent years, more cost-effective first-row metals have shown their potential to construct C–C and C–heteroatom bonds. In this context, major advances have been accomplished with Cp*Co(III) catalysts. Despite this significant progress, these cobalt systems are still at their infancy and important fundamental questions remain unsolved, specially concerning the lack of information on the underlying reaction pathways of these transformations.

This presentation will describe our recent efforts not only to provide critical mechanistic information on well-known reactivity, but also to develop more efficient reactions by trapping and/or synthesizing key reaction intermediates and using them as “knowledge building blocks” for rational design.