Our research group is primarily interested in different aspects of silicon chemistry. Although silicon is the most similar element to carbon, it possesses some striking characteristic differences from its carbon counterpart. Typically, silicon is about 65% larger that carbon, with a Si-C bond about 20% longer that C-C bond. More importantly, silicon is more lipophilic and less electronegative than carbon. On a much broader perspective, silicon-based materials find applications in a large number of areas including polymers (adhesives, coatants, sealants, gels, foams, aerosols, encapsulants and preservatives), semi-conductors, agrochemical and biomedical agents. Our research group is interested in using organically modified silicates to disperse and stabilize metal nanoparticles as heterogeneous catalysts for a wide number of processes including the preparation of silane derivatives and in Si-H insertion coupling reactions.

From a medicinal chemistry perspective, the number of potential sterics and substitution patterns possible on organosilanes provides the opportunities to design and control the stability, solubility, and pharmacokinetic properties of the resulting molecules. As such, our research group is very interested in the medicinal chemistry of organosilicon molecules, with a particular attention given to novel silicon-containing peptides from silicon-based amino acids obtained through a “silicon switch” approach.

From a green and sustainable chemistry perspective, our main focus is to develop and implement sustainable and environmentally friendly catalytic approaches in organic synthesis. Although energy from fossil fuels is essential to our current quality of life, the environmental impacts resulting from the overproduction of CO2 is exacerbating the pace of climate change and global warming. This situation has prompted the development of new strategies to curtail the release of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. One aspect of our research focuses on using metal nanoparticles dispersed and stabilized in organically modified silicates (ORMOSILs) as catalysts in processes that can enable the conversion of CO2 into value-added chemicals through a reductive funtionalization approach (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux7902o3HUc&t=121s). Considering the coating properties of siloxanes, these catalysts can find application in industrial continue flow processes, which offer many advantages over traditional batch reactors, including a high surface-to-volume ratio, better heat and mass transfer, and more control over the reaction conditions.