Research approach

At present, research in the Helaja group covers three areas: ligand development for gold catalysis, catalysis with oxygen-containing “quinoidic” carbon materials and photoredox catalysis with molecular quinones.

…. The exponential growth of homogeneous gold catalysis research is ended, but there are still underexplored area in the field and shortcomings to be fixed.
Gold catalysis in the research group

Catalysis with carbon based graphene-like materials has been envisioned as the most viable strategy for future industrial catalysis is to develop “metal-free” catalysis.
Carbocatalysis in the research group
During the last decades, the development of photoredox catalysis has revolutionized the means of performing organic transformations. The possibility of generating radicals by visible light irradiation has allowed unprecedented forms of reactivity, going beyond the traditional reaction manifolds.
Photoredox catalysis in the research group

Versatile utilization of computational tools represent the forefront for synthetic development. Theoretical support is sought from quantum chemical calculation to rationalize reaction pathways, allow estimation of (physico)chemical properties and predictions of experimentally validated reactivity. Therefore we believe that every chemist must understand how to perform and utilize quantum chemical computations at basic level. In the case of theoretically advanced problems, e.g. related to machine learning, we are in collaboration with the top experts in fields.