1. Asymmetric catalysis

Nature has demonstrated its great wisdom by creating a myriad of life forms on earth. Of note, the robust and magical driving forces of living activities of all life forms are the enzymatic chemical reactions in the organisms. Normally, enzymes are composed by the reactive centre and the surrounding co-factors, and the latter are deemed important to the reactivity of enzymes as they can form multiple interactions with substrates. Besides, chemists have devoted huge efforts on studying of molecular organo- and metallo-catalysts and great achievements are achived. However, the mimicking of enzymes by small molecular catalysts, namely the combination of organo- and metallo-catalysts in a well-organized manner, still lags far behind the real enzymatic systems. Challenges mainly come from the construction of three-dimensional cavity mimics similar to enzyme are really difficult. Although the challenges are great, the substantial scientific issue and benefit are rather attractive, considering the fact that enzymes are vulnerable and sensitive to reaction conditions and difficult to scale up compared to small molecular catalysts. To overcome the challenges, various strategies will be introduced, such as theoretical studies, high throughput screening and combinatorial chemistry, etc. It’s hard to say this is enzymatic or biomimetic catalysis, but we hope to create more efficient and robust catalysts that are comparable to enzymes. Our final goals are utilizing these catalysts to effectively construct chiral molecules and further apply them on pharmaceutical industries.

2. Electrochemical and Photochemical organic synthesis

Essence of chemical reactions is the electron transfer and redistribution, which are related to old bond splitting and new bond formation. Electric field leads the imbalance of electrons in a chemical bonds and photon can excite the bonding electrons to higher energy, both stimuli forces accelerate the bond splitting. Electricity is the greenest reagent as it uses electrons as the redox reagent, and photo-synthesis is also proved to be the most important reaction to our human being. Great success on organic synthesis have achieved over the last century, with various chemical products were fabricated. However, many chemical production processes are extremely pollutive and energetic costly, leading a diverse of environmental problems. Therefore, development of more efficient and green chemical reactions that driven by electricity and light are an everlasting theme in synthetic chemistry. We aim to combine the organo-/metallo-catalysis with electrochemical and photochemical synthesis to create more environmental benign and economical processes.