Preparation and Reactivity of Aluminium Pincer Complexes

This project will use pincer ligands to prepare novel aluminium complexes that feature constrained square planar geometries. The combination of constrained geometry, resulting in Lewis acidic complexes, and a nucleophilic site present on the ligand will be utilised for cooperative bond activation and catalysis. A number of differing ligand scaffolds will be investigated with differing donor atoms including NNN- and PNP- to determine the role that these donor atoms play in supporting cooperative reactivity.