Umicore Adds Yale’s Hazari Precatalysts to Expand its Cross-Coupling Technology Portfolio

The business unit Precious Metals Chemistry of Umicore is expanding its cross-coupling catalyst portfolio with Hazari’s palladium based precatalysts, a technology licensed from Yale University.

Cross-coupling reactions are one of the most elegant and versatile synthetic methods to prepare agrochemicals, electronics, fine chemicals or pharmaceuticals. Compared to current systems, Hazari’s precatalysts can be rapidly and efficiently activated meaning reaction times can be significantly shortened and catalyst loadings can be lowered. The reaction can additionally be performed under milder conditions.

Hazari’s precatalysts are air and moisture stable and compatible with a wider variety of ancillary ligands – including N-heterocycle carbene, phosphine or even Buchwald type ligands – than many other commercially used precatalysts, resulting in an expanded substrate compatibility.

Moreover, an unligated dimeric version of the precatalyst, which can also be readily ligated, is available. Both of these features make the new precatalyst family effective unligated for ligand screening as well as ligated for commercial scale manufacturing.

Umicore now offers to its customers worldwide a selection of Hazari’s precatalysts from research to commercial scale. The exclusive license agreement with Yale enables Umicore to provide full access to an outstanding proprietary, patent-protected technology and to support its customers with an expanded portfolio of cutting-edge homogeneous catalysts and service offering spanning from Buchwald precatalysts to Grubbs metathesis catalysts and many more.