New Catalysts on the Way

Professor Yana Vereschchagina and her peers work on new organoelement and organic compounds. Their research has won a grant from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.

Organoelement compounds are biologically active, so thay can be useful for medication production. Moreover, organophosphorous compounds serve as ligands for complexing agents that serve in catalyst production.

Dr. Vereschchagina says that her group studies solutions through a number of physical methods, such as dipole moments, infrared spectroscopy, X-ray structural analysis, and quantum chemical calculations.

The nearest plan is to study compounds with phosphorus-selenium bond. They can be used as ligands in catalyst production. Phosphorous ligands have been known for quite some time, and now chemists work on cutting production costs and searching for the most effective types.

There is a number of partners in this research, among them Irkutsk Instite of Chemistry, Institute of Organoelement Compounds of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Institute of Organic and Physical Chemistry of the Kazan Scientific Center of RAS.

This is the third grant for Yana Vereschchagina's group, a number of peer-reviewed publications in high-rated journals have been produced. She notes the positive role of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and its support for the researchers’ participation in international conferences.