Executive Summary : | Synthetic chemistry has grown significantly in the last few decades. Several new catalysts and technologies have opened new doorways for the rapid access to molecules of interest. New interdisciplinary fields in chemistry comes into prominence with help of novel technologies related to synthetic chemistry, polymer science, drug delivery, and nanoscience. However, these synthetic advancements in chemistry have also raised awareness of the environmental tracks of chemical processes.1-6 As per the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), the significant reduction in the released chemical waste to the environment in the last decade is due to the adoption of green, sustainable chemistry and engineering practices.6-8 However, the long-term goal of green and sustainable chemistry is not only the modification of existing chemical process, but the current requirement is also decreasing the waste generation through innovation, not just modification.1 As per the ACS green chemistry institute, more than 80% waste generated of any chemical process is associated with the use of toxic organic solvents.9,10 The use of organic solvents not only has negative impact to the environment, the petrochemical-based solvents are non-renewable also.According to the Pizer’s solvent selection guidelines, water is most preferred solvent for a chemical process and mother nature is the best guide for us to perform chemistry using water as the only reaction medium.11,12 According to Sheldon’s statement “the best solvent is no solvent, but if a solvent is needed, then water has a lot to recommend it”.13Although, water has very exiting feature to offer, the major problems associated with the use of water as solvents are the poor solubility of organic molecules, instability of catalysts and reactive intermediates.14 Micellar catalysis is a significant enabler for performing chemical process using water as the reaction medium.15-25 The hydrophobic inner core of micelles is helping to solubilize the organic molecules, stabilize the catalysts and the reactive intermediates from the bulk aqueous medium (Figure 3). Therefore, micelles are considered as nano reactors for performing chemical process efficiently in aqueous medium. Recently, the micellar catalysis has been considered as an emerging field of interdisciplinary research and currently this technology is adopted by several world leading pharma industries such as Novartis Pharmaceuticals and Abbive.19-22In this proposal we will focus on the innovation/designing surfactant which can stabilize heterometallic nanocatalysts and we will use these catalysts for nonconventional but greener transformations via mimicking Nature (in cascade fashion), removing toxic solvents for valuable transformations, target-based research instead of waiting for serendipity, implementing evolutionary processes in existing syntheses. |