Martin Klussmann has left the institute in Summer 2020 and is now working as Senior R&D Chemist at Borchers, Langenfeld. This webpage documents the activities of his group at the MPI für Kohlenforschung (until 2020).
The transition of chemical production to processes that are environmentally benign and sustainable is a big challenge for our society and for chemical research. Homogeneous catalysis can make a substantial contribution by developing processes that convert simple substrates into valuable products without using synthetic reagents in stoichiometric amounts or large amounts of energy. The development of such processes is the prime goal of our research group.
Chinese Scholarship Council
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
DFG
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
Fonds der Chemischen Industrie
2016 to date
Lecture, seminar and practical course in organic chemistry "calorimetry and kinetics", University of Cologne (in English)
2016
13.-14.06., University of Göttingen: course of „Kinetics in Catalysis“ for the International Ph.D. Program Catalysis for Sustainable Synthesis (CaSuS) at the Georg-August-University Göttingen and the Technical University Braunschweig
Winter term 2015/2016
Substitute professor for Prof. Frank Glorius at the university of Münster, lecturing in organic chemistry for bachelor students
2013-2015
Lecture and seminar "Advanced Organic Chemistry" for the bachelor degree course, University of Cologne
2008 to date
Lecture, seminar and pracitcal course in organic chemistry "Calorimetry and Kinetics", University of Cologne
September 2016
Acid-catalyzed initiation of radical reactions: a new article from our group appears in Org. Lett. (DOI: 10.1021/acs.orglett.6b02419) and is announced on Twitter.
Article: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.orglett.6b02419
Announcement on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JOC_OL/status/781135177921728513
August 2016
Timo Krüger from the Universität of Münster starts in our group to prepare his bachelor thesis.
Michael Perryman, previously in the Hanessian group at Montréal, Canada, starts as a postdoc.
Welcome!
July 2016
Thiol-Ene + oxygenation: Yue‘s article appears in Synlett.
https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/abstract/10.1055/s-0035-1562480
June 2016
Radical polymerisation: in collaboration with the group of Prof. Thomas Junkers in Belgium, one of our synthetic methods was used to prepare polymers; published in Macromolecules (DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.6b00192).
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.macromol.6b00192
April 2016
HAT or ET? A mechanistic study, in collaboration with the groups of Prof. Thiel (MPI Mülheim) and Prof. Bietti (Rome), is published in ACS Catalysis (DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.6b00944).
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscatal.6b00944
February 2016
Rik Verschueren, master student at the KU Leuven in Belgium, starts as an intern in our group for the next five months – welcome!
August 2015
A mechanistic study of alkenyl peroxides and their relationship with the Baeyer-Villiger oxidation appears online in Angewandte Chemie, see: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201505648/abstract
July 2015
A new publication from our group has appeared online in Synlett, a radical reaction for the synthesis of oxindoles, see here: https://www.thieme-connect.de/products/ejournals/abstract/10.1055/s-0034-1381052
Julian Riegger joins our group as a bachelor student – welcome!
June 2015
Max Hasenbeck joins our group as a bachelor student – welcome!
Bertrand leaves the group and will soon start as a postdoc in Paolo Melchiorre’s group at the ICIQ in Spain. All the best!
March 2015
Dr. Hui-Lan Yue joins our group as a postdoc - welcome!
March 2015
Chem. Eur. J. has highlighted our recent mechanistic study on their Facebook site and has made it free-to-read for the next two weeks.
https://www.facebook.com/ChemistryAEuropeanJournal
January 2015
A new mechanistic study appears online in Chem. Eur. J. (Chem. Eur. J., 2015): a result from the first collaboration with Dr. Martin Breugst from Cologne, who performed the calculations.
December 2014
Our first two mechanistic studies on the Cu-catalyzed oxidative coupling with N-phenyl tetrahydroisoquinolines (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011 und 2012) have been cited over 100 times each.
A short review on oxidative coupling reactions, our research focus, appears in the journal G.I.T. Labor-Fachzeitschrift (in German): „Chemische Synthese: Funktionalisierung von C-H-Bindungen durch oxidative Kupplung unter Verwendung von Sauerstoff“, see: http://www.git-labor.de/forschung/chemie-physik/chemische-synthese-funktionalisierung-von-c-h-bindungen-durch-oxidative-kupp
November 2014
Naeem finished his PhD at the University of Cologne with magna cum laude (very good), congratulations!
October 2014
Anda and Sophia from Greece join the group for two months, funded by the ERASMUS-programme – welcome!
September 2014
A kinetic study on the reaction mechanism of the Cu-catalyzed oxidative coupling reaction with amines (N-phenyltetrahydroisoquinoline) appears online in J. Org. Chem. (J. Org. Chem., 2014, 79 (24), pp 12033–12040).
July 2014
Bertrand and Martin present research results at the EUCHEM Conference on Organic Free Radicals in Prague (http://www.uochb.cz/web/structure/1259.html).
June 2014
Bertrand finishes his PhD at the University of Cologne with grade 0,7 (magna cum laude, very good).
Our paper on the acid catalyzed oxidative addition of ketones to olefins (publicaton 33) is highlighted in SYNFACTS (Synfacts 2014, 10(7), 0758).
The activation of C-H bonds is an important goal in chemical research. The direct substitution of hydrogen in C-H bonds by a desired fragment creates interesting synthetic alternatives to the more common multi-step approach of first introducing reactive functional groups. Instead, only one step is needed and very simple substrates can be used, as C-H bonds are ubiquitous in organic compounds. Oxidative coupling reactions can achieve such transformations by utilizing an oxidant and a catalyst.
In our group, we focus on the development of such reactions under mild and sustainable conditions, i.e., preferably by using elemental oxygen or simple peroxides as oxidant.
We are also developing other methods for direct and atom economic organic syntheses, for example to access starting materials for our projects or to apply strategies that were inspired by our mechanistic studies. In collaboration with the Junkers group, our method of acid-induced radical formation was also applied to polymerization reactions at ambient temperature (Macromolecules 2016, 49, 4124-4135).
We are highly interested in investigating the mechanism of organic reactions. We study reactions developed in our own group, but also others and we are always interested in collaborations with other research groups. We use a variety of techniques, including synthetic, spectroscopic and kinetic studies (e.g., see J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2012, 134, 5317). To obtain kinetic data, we use NMR spectroscopy or reaction calorimetry. We like to evaluate the data by Donna Blackmond’s method of Reaction Progress Kinetic Analysis (e.g., see J. Org. Chem. 2014, 79, 12033). In collaboration with other scientists, we combine experimental with theoretical mechanistic studies (e.g., see Chem. Eur. J. 2015).
Bosnidou, Alexandra-Eleni
Internship, 10/2014 - 11/2014
Demaerel, Joachim
Internship, 02/2013 - 06/2013
Gulzar, Naeem
PhD Student, 03/2011 - 11/2014
Hasenbeck, Max
Bachelor thesis, 06/2015 - 08/2015
Hillringhaus, Tim
Apprentice, technician, 07/2010 - 05/2012
Iosub, Andrei V.
Internship, 06/2009 - 08/2009
Dr. Jones, Kevin Mark
Postdoc, 10/2010 - 09/2012
Karanestora, Sofia
Internship, 10/2014 - 11/2014
Dr. Karier, Pol
Feb 11 - May 11 Intern Klußmann Group; May 17 – Jun 18 Post-doc Fürstner Group
Krüger, Timo
Bachelor thesis 08/2016 - 09/2016
Müller, Maximilian
Bachelor thesis 08/2016 - 09/2016
Nitsch, Jacqueline
Apprentice, 07/2009 - 01/2011
Ott, Alexandra
Internship 02/2017 - 03/2017
Dr. Perryman, Michael
Postdoc, 08/2016 - 08/2017
Pintér, Áron
Postdoc, 08/2008 - 09/2010
Riegger, Julian
Bachelor thesis, 07/2015 - 10/2015, 03/2016 - 04/2016
Schmitz, Corinna
Apprentice, 07/2011 - 01/2013
Dr. Schweitzer-Chaput, Bertrand
PhD Student, Postdoc, 01/2012 - 06/2015
Dr. Shao, Wen
Postdoc, 09/2017 – 08/2018
Sud, Abhishek
Postdoc, 06/2007 - 05/2010
Sureshkumar, Devarajulu
Postdoc, 09/2007 - 04/2010
Székely, Anna
Dr. Uemiya, Nobuhito
Guest Scientist, 01/2013 - 06/2014
Van Hoof, Max
Internship, 02/2017 - 08/2017
Verschueren, Rik
Internship 02/2016 - 06/2016
Dr. Yue, Hui-Lan
Postdoc, 04/2015 - 03/2016