Cooperative & Adaptive Molecular Inorganic Chemistry: Fundamentals & Catalysis

Organometallic reactivity is often described in terms of what happens at a single metal center. We are interested in a broader question: How can different components of a molecular system work together and dynamically adapt to enable new chemical reactivity?

Research in the Broere Group focuses on designing and understanding molecular inorganic systems in which reactivity emerges from cooperation between metals, ligands, or both. A major part of our work explores metal–metal cooperativity, using well-defined multimetallic complexes to uncover how interactions between several metal centres can change bonding, substrate activation and catalysis. Increasingly, we also investigate metal–ligand cooperativity and adaptive coordination environments, where changes in ligand binding, protonation state, electronic structure or molecular geometry open reaction pathways that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Our research spans fundamental questions in bonding, mechanism and molecular reactivity, while using these insights to develop new approaches to bond activation and catalysis. We are particularly interested in systems whose structure and reactivity can respond dynamically to chemical or external stimuli, including emerging work on stimuli-responsive and photoswitchable coordination chemistry. To understand these often complex systems, we combine synthetic molecular inorganic and organometallic chemistry with spectroscopy, kinetics, electrochemistry and computational chemistry.

Ultimately, we aim to uncover general design principles for controlling molecular structure and reactivity through cooperativity and adaptability, and to use these principles to develop new chemistry for challenging and more sustainable transformations.