From Bench to Plant: An Opportunity for Transition Metal Paired Electrocatalysis

Electrochemistry and transition metal catalysis are gigantic fields from which several methodologies have found applications in both medicinal and process chemistry. Surprisingly, the transfer from bench to plant is much more difficult for transition metal electrocatalysis. While a plethora of those transformations have emerged in the landscape of medicinal chemistry over more than 50 years, they were not further developed on a larger scale. Of course, extra parameters have to be considered when an electrocatalytic reaction is run, but they cannot justify the absence of transition metal electrocatalysis examples in process chemistry. This Perspective aims to demonstrate that intrinsic characteristics related to the different electrocatalytic modes are responsible for the absence of such processes on large scale. It will also highlight why paired electrocatalyzed reactions have the potential to fill the gap between medicinal and process chemistry. Finally, a strategy to develop unprecedented and process-oriented paired electrocatalyzed methods will be disclosed, and hopefully, this will motivate electropractitioners to study challenging and applicable transformations.

Automated summary

This article discusses the applications of electrochemistry and transition metal catalysis in medicinal and process chemistry, explores the difficulties in scaling up transition metal electrocatalysis from the lab to the industry, and argues that intrinsic characteristics related to different electrocatalytic modes are responsible for the absence of transition metal electrocatalysis in large-scale process chemistry.