Rhodium-catalyzed synthesis of organosulfur and organophosphorus compounds via equilibrium control

A catalyst is a substance that changes the course of reactions without affecting the relative stability of substrates and products. The development of an efficient catalyst, which decreases the activation energy of a reaction, results in equilibrium when the relative thermodynamic stabilities of the substrates and products are close. I found that a transition metal complex could be used as a catalyst in the synthesis and transformation of organosulfur and organophosphorus compounds, and a variety of rhodium catalyzed reactions involving cleavage of heteroatom bonds such as C-H, C-S, C-F, S-S, P-P bonds were developed. Such single bond metathesis reactions are often under equilibrium. The control of such equilibrium to provide the desired products with high efficiency has recently become a subject of interest. I developed an equilibrium control method using co substrates. I also developed another method, that uses thermodynamically intermediate compounds to shift equilibrium. This method using a combination of transition metal catalysis and equilibrium control can be generally used for the synthesis of organoheteroatom compounds.