German scientists are reaching for the Holy Grail of chemists. They have developed a method that has been dreamed of for years

One of the biggest goals in chemistry today is to find a way to easily obtain amines from ammonia and unsaturated hydrocarbons. Amines are organic chemical compounds derived from ammonia, which are widely used in many industries – agriculture, pharmaceuticals, as well as the oil and energy industries. It is therefore not surprising that the method of their simple and cheap production is today the so-called the holy grail of chemists.

The holy grail of chemists has potentially been discovered. German researchers have a new method

Theoretically, it is easiest to obtain amines from ammonia, which is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen. Ammonia is one of the most frequently produced chemicals in the world and is widely used to produce other nitrogen-containing chemicals. Theoretically, it is possible to break the strong bonds of hydrogen and nitrogen (forming ammonia) and transfer them to other molecules, e.g. unsaturated hydrocarbons, such as ethylene, an important substance in the chemical industry –

Except it’s not that simple. Catalysts are needed to trigger the appropriate reaction, but conventional transition metal catalysts react with ammonia and therefore become inactive. Therefore, catalysts that will not react with ammonia are needed to trigger the reaction. ‘The hydroamination of unactivated alkenes with ammonia is therefore considered a major challenge or the holy grail of catalysis,’ said Professor Frank Breher, who led the research.

The researcher, together with a team of scientists from the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie in Karlsruhe (in southwestern Germany) and in cooperation with scientists from the University of Paderborn in Germany and the Complutense University in Madrid, have just developed a new method that gives great hope for winning the mentioned Holy Grail.

The authors of the study discovered their own way to activate ammonia, based not on transition metals, but on main group elements. Researchers believe that this process not only makes it possible to easily obtain amines, but also does not generate any waste, which is of great importance for the natural environment.

Researchers managed to develop a compound called FLP that easily reacts with small ammonia molecules and breaks their bonds. Interestingly, the breaking of bonds is not only reversible, but also occurs at room temperature, which is a huge step for chemists towards achieving their goal. “So far, we have only converted activated substrates, without unsaturated hydrocarbons. But we have come much closer to the reaction of our dreams,” wrote Breher, quoted in the KIT release.

The results of the study by Frank Breher’s team have been published