(Feb.4, '15) A team of Caltech chemists has discovered a method for
producing a group of silicon-containing organic chemicals without relying on
expensive precious metal catalysts. Instead, the new technique uses as a
catalyst a cheap, abundant chemical that is commonly found in chemistry labs
around the world—potassium tert-butoxide—to help create a host of products
ranging from new medicines to advanced materials. And it turns out that the
potassium salt is more effective than state-of-the-art precious metal complexes
at running very challenging chemical reactions.