Developing Catalysts and Catalytic Processes with Industrial Relevance

Abstract

The catalysis group of Solvias has its roots in the Central Research Laboratories of Ciba-Geigy. Since the early eighties its research has been focused on three areas of catalytic technology: heterogeneous hydrogenation, coupling catalysis, and enantioselective hydrogenation. Today, these are still the catalytic methods with the greatest industrial potential. In this overview a short description will be given how these methods have been developed further since the spin-off of Solvias in 1999. It will be discussed which strategies were successful and what the most important results have been in the first decade of Solvias.

Keywords

• Coupling catalysis
• Enantioselective hydrogenation
• Heterogeneous hydrogenation
• Solvias