Nowadays, the Photoredox catalyst has become an essential way to synthesize novel organic compounds. Novel organic compounds have some crucial applications in the pharmaceutical sector and also agrochemical products.
Recently, a research team from University of Rochester first time demonstrates how light emitting quantum dots can be used as photoredox catalysts. They claimed that light emitting quantum dots is the most efficient replacement for existing Photoredox catalysts.
Photoredox Catalyst is a type of catalysis that utilized the energy of light to accelerate the rate of oxidation-reduction reaction (or shortly Redox reaction) via single-electron transfer events. Basically, in the organic chemistry, carbon-carbon bond is the essential chemical elements to build an organic compound, many of them essential to biological functions.
In fact, two researchers named Todd Krauss and Daniel Weix demonstrates for the first time how light emitting quantum dots can be used as photoredox catalysts to create carbon-carbon bonds. According to their test result, this light emitting quantum dots create similar and effective C-C bond which is created by ruthenium and iridium in photoredox chemistry in present time.
As per The University of Rochester, Quantum dots are tiny semiconductor crystals consisting of some thousands of atoms. It has a property that lies between those of bulk of minerals with billions upon billions of atoms and those of discrete molecules with only 10-20 atoms. More accurately, the property of the quantum dots resembles both microscopic as well as the macroscopic world.
A quantum dot has the chemical and photostability of minerals though it also has a layer of organic molecules on the outside. This organic molecule allows it to be manipulated as anyone can manipulate small molecule in the solution like spray and coated it and mix it with other, said Prof. Krauss. Regarding this study, they published a paper in The Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Until this latest discovery, most of the chemists have studied properties of quantum dots and know very limited application used in the TV display. However, the researcher from Rochester also demonstrates that quantum dots could be an efficient catalyst to create hydrogen-hydrogen bonds which are potential for the solar fuel production.
During the research about the photoredox reaction, Krauss and his team tested the effectiveness of cadmium/selenium (CdSe) quantum dot to produce the C-C bond. From the outcome, they discovered that the convenient CdSe quantum dot is a suitable and more improved replacement for existing catalyst with greater efficiency. After the breakthrough performance of quantum dots and now they are looking for further improvement by using Nanocrystalline titanium dioxide (TiO2).
