Each year, the SCF regional office rewards promising young scientists for work carried out during their doctorate.
Cassandre Boriès , carried her thesis out within the MACO team at the Paris Institute of Molecular Chemistry (IPCM) under the supervision of Dr. Marc Petit and Dr. Marion Barbazanges, presents the development of new methods for the reduction of unsaturated nitrogenous bonds catalyzed by well-defined low-valence cobalt hydrides of the type HCo(PMe4) and HCo(N2)(PPh3)3. The motivations guiding her work have been the development of alternatives to the use of noble metals and expensive ligands, as well as the establishment of mild and selective conditions for the reduction of various chemical functions. In the course of her work, she has tackled the reduction of imines, N-heteroarenes and nitro groups by hydrosilylation and/or hydroboration. These methods have proved competitive with others using less abundant metals or hydrogenation, for example.
Through these different lines of research, mechanistic studies have been systematically carried out to understand catalytic cycles. In particular, the isolation of new silylated cobalt dihydride complexes has been a key focus of his work. In addition, numerous stoichiometric experiments, competition experiments, isotope labelling, kinetic studies and X-ray diffraction analyses have shed light on the mechanistic subtleties of the various catalytic systems developed.