Soft Interactions and Hard Chemistry: Strategic Catalysis from the Molecular to the Industrial Scale

Catalysis represents a cornerstone for the advancement of human technology, offering invaluable tools to solve critical real-world problems such as climate change, energy consumption, and industrial productivity. While academia displays a profound interest in developing novel catalytic methodologies, the industrial world leverages these tools to establish economical, safe, and sustainable synthetic routes for producing highly valuable intermediates and final products. In the present work, both the fundamental academic and applied industrial perspectives on catalysis and technology are explored. In the first part (Chapter 2, 3, 4), areas of fundamental academic interest are investigated, focusing on the development of novel catalytic systems driven by non-covalent interactions and the use of nanostructured materials. Chapters 2 and 3 specifically detail the application of nitrogen-doped carbon dots (NCDs) in asymmetric organocatalysis, exploring their synergistic interplay with chiral counteranions (via ACDC) and the surprising impact of weak London dispersion forces on achieving complete enantiodivergence. Chapter 4 further expands on non-covalent strategies by introducing new catalyst families for anion-binding catalysis, presenting novel scaffolds based on rigid 1,8-diaminocarbazole frameworks and rationally designed, facially polarized fluorinated cyclohexanes. On the other hand, Chapter 5 highlights how catalytic principles and modern technology, specifically continuous flow chemistry, can be leveraged to accelerate and intensify industrial "heavy chemistry," rendering it significantly more effective, economical, and sustainable. This is demonstrated through the development of a novel, safer, and more cost-effective synthesis of a key pharmaceutical intermediate for Tolterodine, which successfully eliminates hazardous reagents (like NaBH4) and achieves higher purity via a process optimized in both batch and continuous flow regimes.