A new Nature Communications paper from BioLEC highlights the central and highly collaborative role that national laboratories play within the center. “Photolytic activation of Ni(II)X2L explains how Ni-mediated cross coupling begins” elucidates the mechanism behind the activation of nickel complexes that are used for photocatalysis that has previously been unresolved, but the work was only made possible with the combined efforts of four separate BioLEC groups including three at different national labs.
Nickel photocatalysis has recently become vital to organic synthesis and is being adopted at scale in the pharmaceutical industry with its advantages over traditional palladium-catalyzed methods including mild conditions, different scope due to the increased propensity of Ni towards radical reactivity, and the abundance and low cost of Ni sources. The new BioLEC work, undertaken at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Northeastern University, not only reveals in detail the mechanism behind nickel catalyst activity, but also explains the role of the solvent in protecting the catalyst from off-cycle dimerization, demonstrates that two photons are often required to drive the reaction, and shows how tuning the ligand can control the concentration of active Ni(I) species. These discoveries will lead to improvements in catalyst efficiency and selectivity, as well as greater control over the reactions catalyzed.
More details are available in the publication: Max Kudisch, Reagan X. Hooper, Lakshmy K. Valloli, Justin D. Earley, Anna Zieleniewska, Jin Yu, Stephen DiLuzio, Rebecca W. Smaha, Hannah Sayre, Xiaoyi Zhang, Matthew J. Bird, Amy A. Cordones, Garry Rumbles, Obadiah G. Reid, “Photolytic activation of Ni(II)X2L explains how Ni-mediated cross coupling begins”, Nature Communications 2025, 16, 5530, available online.
A news story about the work is also available from the BNL website: https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=122468