Carbon-based materials metal-catalyzed coupling

In an era of growing concern about the human energy demands and its consequences for the environment, the importance of catalysis is evident. One of the most ubiquitous families of catalytic cycles is that of cross-coupling reactions [1,2]. These catalytic cycles can be applied to form carbon-carbon bonds, which are of paramount importance for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, as well as materials. The active catalytic species in these cross couplings is a transition metal complex, often based on palladium (Scheme 1). The ongoing importance of palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions has been emphasized by the fact that it was the topic of the 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry [3-5]. 

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