Roel graduated!
Roel more than successfully defended his PhD thesis on Tuesday September 10th 2024! His thesis, entitled “Metal-Metal Cooperativity in Well-defined Dinuclear Complexes – Understanding the Reactivity of Dicopper and Dicobalt Complexes Using the PNNP Expanded Pincer Ligand”, is not only a high quality piece of science, it is also full of awesome complexes that came in all colors of the rainbow. This is also nicely reflected on his cover. Roel was the second PhD to graduate from the group and made doing a PhD look easy. His work really took our chemistry to the next level! Roel’s valuable insights and great ideas will be dearly missed now that he moved to Switzerland to do a postdoc with Eva Hevia at the University of Bern.
Posted on October 25th 2024
Cody finished his PhD!
On Monday April 22th 2024, Cody defended his PhD thesis entitled “Combining Metal-Metal and Metal-Ligand Cooperativity – Homomultimetallic complexes of copper, iron and ruthenium”. Cody was the first PhD to graduate from the group. He did a phenomenal job throughout his PhD and defense, during which he looked sharp as ever. Now, Dr. Cody and his humor – the only thing dryer than our glovebox solvents – will be missed now that he joined TNO’s circular electronics unit as a research scientist.
Posted on May 7th 2024
Multimetallic N2 chemistry funded by the ERC!
Great news from the European Research Council, our N2-CONVERT project will receive funding! The project will focus on obtaining fundamental understanding of how multiple metal centers (2-4!) can work together to activate N2, and use this knowledge to develop homogeneous catalyst systems for the direct conversion of N2 into organic amines through C-N bond formation reactions. If you are as excited by this concept as we are, please apply for one of the PhD and PD vacancies to work become part of the team and push our chemistry beyond bimetallics!
Posted on September 6th 2023
Collaborative paper with the Hetterscheid group in ACS Catalysis
Woohoo! A huge congratulations to both Lars and Errikos for getting their collaborative paper with the Hetterscheid group out in ACS Catalysis ! In this work we dusted off the old BPMAN ligand and put two copper atoms in to explore the catalytic behavior in the electrochemical Oxygen Reduction Reaction (ORR). We found evidence for metal-metal cooperativity, which enables improved selectivity for the four-electron ORR to give water. This was a challenging and very educational collaboration, to be continued…..
Posted on April 30th 2023
Dicopperhydride find its way into Angewandte Chemie
A big congrats to Roel for getting his work on a funky anionic dicopper hydride published as a HOT PAPER in Angewandte Chemie ! Although the plan was to make the copperhydride more reactive towards insertion type chemistry by breaking up it’s dimeric form, Roel found that this didn’t work at all. Instead Roel did a great job at showing that the dicopperhydride behaves like a copper hydride cluster, despite only containing two copper atoms. This opens up new interesting avenues for future chemistry!
Posted on March 21st 2022
Danny’s wins the 2022 Utrecht University’s Teaching Talent!
During Utrecht University’s ‘Onderwijsparade’ Danny found out that he won the 2022 Teaching talent prize! Here on the photo you see his response after making eye contact with, Renate Baarslag, who nominated Danny as the educational commissioner from the chemistry student association, U.S.S. Proton. Danny feels honoured and proud with this beautiful recognition by studentes and colleagues 🙂
Posted on March 21st 2022
Danny’s nominated for Utrecht University’s Teaching Talent Award 2022
Utrecht’s chemistry student association U.S.S. Proton has nominated Danny for the university Lecturer Talent award. The jury composed of UU lecturers and students has drawn up a short list of three lecturer nominees, which includes Danny for the Lecturer Talent Award. The criteria for selection included the lecturer’s vision of education, creating interaction with students, and the lecturer’s role in the team. The winners will be announced on Thursday, 10 March 2022.
Posted on February 3rd 2022
Cody’s work was accepted for publication in Chemical Science!
A big congrats to Cody for getting his work accepted in Chemical Science! This was a very challenging project with difficult chemistry, but due to Cody’s perseverance we figured it all out. We found that our PNNP platform is also chemically “non-innocent” and can lose H atoms when bound to redox-active metal ions . This work provides important insights and opportunities for the development of bimetallic systems that exploit CPET pathways to enable new (catalytic) reactivity.
Posted on February 3rd 2022
Lars wins the Unilever Research Prize 2021!!
Congratulations to Lars for winning the Unilever Research Prize for his MSc thesis work in our group. A well deserved prize for his excellent work, which was done under the supervision of Cody. Now it’s time to RuRuRuwrite up the four(!) manuscripts that Lars made significant contributions to during his time in our group.
Posted on November 9th 2021
Cody’s paper on ChemRxiv!
A big to finishing a beautiful manuscript on combining metal-metal, metal-ligand and chemical non-innocence in diiron carbonyl clusters. This was an extremely challenging project to figure out so we are all thrilled to see it online as a pre-print on ChemRxiv. Let’s hope the reviewers share our sympathies about his work. Be sure to check out the fantastically designed and drawn graphical abstract that Emily made on the publications page!
Posted on October 5th 2021
Two out – two in
A big congrats to Dylan and Marije for obtaining their BSc degrees after a project in our group! Also, a warm welcome to the new MSc students Marieke and Janneke who will join team hardcore and the softies, respectively. We look forward to the exciting chemistry you will be doing.
Posted on October 1st 2021
New grants awarded!
We were awarded a ENW-M1 and ENW XS grant! This means the first official grant for “Team Rust” and also a new PhD candidate in the low-valent warrior team for a PhD candidate , which will work on an exciting project involving bimetallic catalysts for dehydrogenation of a new class of LOHCs.
Posted on June 30th 2021 and updated on August 30th 2021
The Rise of Team Rust!
A warm welcome Emily and Andrea, the Broere group’s first postdoc and latest MSc student, respectively. Both are going to take a long hard look at how mother nature uses multiple metals in oxidation chemistry, steal the idea and figure out how to do similar cool stuff without all the spaghetti around the active site. We are all looking forward to the exciting chemistry coming out of their hands, which will undoubtedly also find new and elaborate ways to make …..
Posted on January 21st 2021
A Chemical Toolbox for the Future
Danny recorded a short video as part of the KNCV Eye-openers program. This program enables young scientists to tell something about their research in clear language, what’s it about, what inspires them and what they’re dreaming of. The KNCV eye-openers video series is for those interested in Science (and realize, of course, that things are much more complicated. Click here for the Dutch Version
Posted on January 4th 2021
Interview published in C2W
Danny was interviewed about how a Friday-afternoon experiment in his postdoc with Pat Holland resulted in a publication in Nature. In the interview he explains how teamwork was the key to the exciting new reaction that is reported. Along these lines, Danny discusses the importance of teamwork in our group and how this is encouraged through “Turnover Thursday”. The interview (in Dutch) can be found here.
Posted on October 21th 2020
Welcome to Abdullah, congrats Marijn and re-welcome Errikos
The new academic year has arrived! After a long COVID-19 related delay, Abdullah has finally joined the group to do his BSc thesis work under the supervision of Cody. Abdullah will take Marijn’s place who finished her project and obtained her BSc degree (congrats!) Also, a re-welcome to Errikos, who spent half a year in the Tonks Lab (well…. probably mostly in his appartment due to the lockdown) in Minnesota has rejoined the group do his PhD. We look forward to the cool new chemistry that Abdullah and Errikos will be doing!
Posted on September 8th 2020
Errikos’ MSc thesis in the final three for two different prizes
Double congratulations to Errikos!! After being nominated for both the KNCV Golden Master Thesis and the Graduate School of Natural Sciences Master’s Thesis awards, Errikos’ thesis has made it to the final three for both awards! Later this year we will find out if Errikos will bring home (even more) prize money. UPDATE: Errikos won the best GSNS thesis award!
Arthur’s work is accepted for publication in ChemComm!
Arthur’s work on a two-faced expanded pincer that was previously on ChemRxiv has been accepted for publication in the ChemComm Emerging Investigators 2020 issue!. In this paper we describe a new PONNOP expanded pincer ligand that can bind two copper(I) centers in close proximity, but undergoes an unexpected rearrangement in the presence of nickel(II) salts to form a mononuclear ‘regular’ pincer complex. Though both motifs are very interesting this work also functions as a cautionary note for the design of dinucleating naphthyridine-derived ligands featuring phosphinite donors. Credit to Lada Dabranskaya for the artwork 🙂
Second paper is accepted! & Errikos goes on a sabbatical
Congratulations to Errikos whose 2nd paper on dicopper(I)-“ErrikPhos” chemistry was just accepted for publication in Organometallics! In this paper we describe how the bonding of the 3-center 2-electron bridging mesityl ligand can be tuned by changing the expanded pincer protonation state. Also, in the wake of this good news Errikos has departed for a 5 month sabbatical in the Tonks Lab at the University of Minnesota. Try not to freeze there!
Roel joins the lab!
After writing a great review on heterobimetallic catalysis, Roel finally officially joined the Broere Group to start his PhD research. We are all looking forward to the new avenues in bimetallic chemistry & catalysis that Roel will be exploring! Most likely it will contain a healthy dose of naphthyridines and computational chemistry.
Postdoc position available
Are you that excellent chemist looking to do a PD that focuses on developing multimetallic catalysts for the conversion of biomass-derived compounds into valuable chemicals, or do you know that person? If so, there is an opportunity available in our group!
Motivated candidates are invited to send their application (incl. letter of motivation, CV, references, and list of grades).
Welcome to Lars!
A warm welcome to Lars Killian who has joined the Broere Group to do his MSc Thesis research project. Lars will be working together with Cody and we are looking forward to his upcoming work on bimetallic catalysts.
New Glovebox is up and running
Our new glovebox arrived! Now the OCC group has a total of four gloveboxes (three 4-glove and one 2-glove). With the latest addition waiting times should be drastically shortened, which should improve our workflow and output. One thing is certain: the box will never be as clean again as it is in the picture.
First paper is published!
Congratulations to Errikos whose work on “ErrikPhos” with dicopper(I) is accepted for publication in Chemistry – A European Journal! Not only does this new expanded pincer ligand bind two metals, it also enables cooperative dihydrogen activation to give an unusual tetranuclear copper hydride cluster.
