Ayda Elhage

University of Ottawa · Department of Chemistry

Upon UVA irradiation, aryl halides can undergo dehalogenation in presence of bases and methanol as a hydrogen donor. This catalyst-free photochemical dehalogenation is furnished through a facile radical-chain reaction under mild conditions. The chain reaction follows UVA irradiation of the reaction mixture in a transition metal-free environment. Me...

A mechanistic study is herein presented for the use of heterogeneous photocatalysts based on perylene moieties. First, the successful immobilization of perylene diimides (PDI) on silica matrices is demonstrated, including their full characterization by means of electronic microscopy, surface area measurements, powder XRD, thermogravimetric analysis...

The use of heterogeneous catalysis has key advantages compared to its homogeneous counterpart, such as easy catalyst separation and reusability. However, one of the main challenges is to ensure good performance after the first catalytic cycles. Active catalytic species can be inactivated during the catalytic process leading to reduced catalytic eff...

Heterogeneous catalysis presents significant advantages over homogeneous catalysis such as ease separation and reuse of the catalyst. Here we show that a very inexpensive, manageable and widely available material – glass wool – can act as catalyst support for a number of different reactions. Different metal and metal oxide nanoparticles, based on P...

The Sonogashira reaction can easily be photocatalysed by supported palladium nanoparticles. We demonstrate that the direct excitation of the PdNPs can catalyze the C-C coupling between different aryl iodides and acetylenes under very mild conditions in short reaction times. The catalyst is air and moisture tolerant and can be supported in a wide ra...

Palladium-decorated TiO2 is a moisture and air-tolerant versatile catalyst. Its photocatalytic activity can be tuned in favour of hydrogenation or isomerization of benzyl-substituted alkenes simply by changing the irradiation wavelength. Benzyl-substituted alkenes are selectively isomerized to phenyl-substituted alkenes (E-isomer) with complete con...

The use of gold nanoparticles supported on TiO2 (Au@TiO2) as photocatalysts was extended to include photoinduced reductive C-C coupling. Surface plasmon excitation of supported AuNP in the presence of an amine leads to the C-C coupling for a variety of substituted benzyl bromides at room temperature with good yields in a free-radical mediated react...