mulksgrp

In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Homer J. Simpson, The Simpsons 1995, S06E21.

Research in the mulksgrp

Renewable feedstocks for chemical synthesis are highly oxidised compared to crude oil. We aim to make these feedstocks more useful without energy-intensive processing through the development of reagents and catalysts based on highly oxidised organic molecules. We develop their uses as reagents and catalysts, for example, towards hydrodefluorination reactions, polymer degradations, and for capturing small molecules. We also develop computational models for cost-efficient and intuitive reactivity predictions in p-block elements.

We are a young independent research group founded at the Institute for Organic Chemistry (iOC) of the RWTH Aachen University in Germany in March 2022. Aachen is an atmospheric old German city in immediate vicinity of the Netherlands and to Belgium. The RWTH Aachen University is Germany’s largest university of technology and ranks 99 worldwide across all subjects and 66 in chemistry in the 2024 QS ranking.

We are always open to discuss science or working or studying with us. Get in touch!

Featured recent contributions

On the road to isolable geminal carbodications

Recent advances in the isolation of masked gem-carbodications have shown that such species may be more accessible than we thought. This perspective article summarizes the milestones of the last 140 years of research and aims to point the way toward the isolation of species containing true four-valence-electron carbon. Currently, strong mesomeric donation or coordination by donor ligands is used to stabilize such dications. Achieving true localization of both charges on a single atom will require smart combinations of inductive donation, hyperconjugation, and steric hindrance.

Hard and soft electrons and holes

The principle of hard and soft acids and bases (HSAB) has given chemists a broad understanding of the observed selectivity in a variety of reaction classes. As we become increasingly aware of the principle’s serious limitations, this study provides an alternative approach. The distinction between hard and soft electrons and holes (HSEH) adds to our understanding of reactivity. Because radicals are typically better stabilized at soft sites and lone pairs are better stabilized at hard sites, we can easily distinguish them. Simple electron density differences (from three single-point density functional theory [DFT] calculations) can be used to visualize this effect and condense the differences into a numerical descriptor. The usefulness of the concept is demonstrated by reproducing the experimentally observed reactivity of a wide range of molecules, including larger examples relevant to the material and pharmaceutical sciences.