ÉîÒ¹¸£Àû¹ú²ú¾«Æ·

Biography

Matthias Driess studied chemistry and philosophy of science at the Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg (Germany) where he also received his PhD. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, US, before finishing his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg. In 1996 he was appointed as full-professor for inorganic chemistry at the Ruhr University Bochum, and since 2005 he has held a chair for organometallic chemistry and inorganic materials at the Department of ÉîÒ¹¸£Àû¹ú²ú¾«Æ· of the Technical University of Berlin. 
 
He served as spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence UniCat from 2007 to 2019, is founding director of the UniCat-BASF joint lab BasCat, and scientific director of Chemical Invention Factory CIF, a pre-start-up centre for entrepreneurs from the molecular sciences. He has received several awards, including the Wacker Silicone Award, Alfred Stock Memorial Award of the German Chemical Society, and the Otto Klung Award for Outstanding ÉîÒ¹¸£Àû¹ú²ú¾«Æ·. He is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the European Academy of Sciences. He has published more than 460 scientific papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. 
 
Matthias has a scientific, philosophical and artistic perspective, and often brings these elements together in his work, offering some insight into the broader thinking that informs his research. He has initiated outreach art projects such as theatre performances of plays of the genre ‘Science on Stage’. He has co-directed two plays by Carl Djerassi (‘Insufficiency’ written by him, as well as ‘Oxygen’ co-authored with Roald Hoffmann) which – together with actors from the Vienna's Burgtheater and the Berlin University of the Arts – have enjoyed great popularity.

The history of chemistry teaches us very clearly: none of today's important chemical discoveries were planned.

Matthias Driess

Q&A

Who or what first sparked your interest in chemistry, and how has that interest evolved over time? 

I grew up in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and had the privilege of having excellent teachers in math, physics, and chemistry in elementary and high school. After regular classes, I was allowed to perform chemical experiments in the school lab as difficult as the synthesis of chlorine trioxide through oxidation of chlorine dioxide gas with ozone (prepared in situ by oxygen discharge). Despite the concerns of my mother and siblings, I even had set up a small lab at home to perform experiments in my spare time. I completed my Abitur (high school degree) at the Technical University 'Carl Schorlemmer' in Merseburg, which offered a special chemistry programme, and attended lectures in theoretical physics and chemistry. These experiences greatly impressed me and reinforced my decision to study chemistry.

Can you tell us more about your work?

In our work, several groundbreaking discoveries in molecular and materials chemistry have been made, and advanced solutions have been developed for existing and emerging real-world problems, such as the replacement of rare and toxic metals in (electro)chemical transformations using abundant non-toxic elements. Research has spanned a relatively wide range of topics in the molecular sciences, most notably the organometallic chemistry of uncommon silicon compounds and the synthesis of inorganic nanomaterials for applications in heterogeneous catalysis, electrochemistry and other energy- and resource-saving thin-film technologies, using the soft molecular precursor approach.

A series of new classes of highly reactive functional silicon compounds has been realised, including N-heterocyclic silylenes (the silicon analogues of carbenes) and the first silanone complex that can remain stable at room temperature. The distinctive feature of the latter is that, for more than 100 years, methods to enable the synthesis of a stable silanone (Râ‚‚Si=O), the silicon analogue of classical ketones and a monomeric unit of polysiloxanes/silicones, had been sought without success.

In addition, we have discovered the first isolable monoatomic zero-valent silicon species, named silylones. The existence of this class of compounds had previously been predicted theoretically, and, based on their structure, they have been shown to act as superior sources for the transfer of a single silicon atom at room temperature to unsaturated substrates, or for the doping of materials to generate n-type III–V semiconductors.

Bottleable silylenes have also been developed, and their suitability has been demonstrated for both metal-free and 3d-metal-mediated activation of small molecules and for use in homogeneous catalysis. Because silylenes act as significantly stronger donor ligands toward transition metals than, for instance, phosphines and carbenes, bis-silylenes have been developed in our group as strong chelating ligands towards nickel. This has enabled the identification of highly chemoselective homogeneous catalysts for the hydrogenation of functionalised olefins. Furthermore, chemoselective high-performance catalysts based on nickel, rather than palladium, have been developed in our work for the Sonogashira cross-coupling of terminal alkynes with α-halogenated olefins.

Another aspect of our work concerns the synthesis of advanced energy materials using low-temperature molecular precursor approaches, linking organometallic chemistry and materials science. In our group, a form of indium tin oxide (ITO) has been reported with a reduced indium concentration of around 50% (compared with approximately 95% in conventional ITO) while maintaining conductivity. As indium is a relatively scarce element and ITO is widely used in optoelectronic applications, including flat-screen technology, field-effect transistors and solar cells, this represents a potentially more sustainable approach. The material has shown improved performance in thin layers in electroluminescent devices, with energy savings of around 30%, and has led to the patenting of the material by Evonik Industries and TU Berlin and its manufacture at the mini-plant scale.

Thin porous films of this ITO can be used as conducting electrodes and have been explored, within our team, in emerging applications such as platinum-free biofuel cells. The same soft molecular approach has also been applied in our work to the development of noble metal-free dual electrocatalytic materials for overall water-splitting (hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions), based on ultrathin films of non-noble metal chalcogenides (e.g. FeSe₂) and pnictides (e.g. NiP) on steel electrodes. More recent work in our group includes the fabrication of overall water-splitting devices based on cobalt borophosphates, which show low overpotentials and sustained stability under industrial conditions (60°C, 6 molar KOH) for more than six months.

In nature, water oxidation occurs via photosynthesis and is catalysed by a protein-bound oxygen-evolving Mnâ‚„CaOâ‚… complex (OEC) in photosystem II. Inspired by the role of this complex, as well as the combination of low cost, low toxicity, natural abundance and variable redox states of manganese, a manganese-based anode material was developed in 2021 in the Driess group. This material was paired for combining electrocatalytic water oxidation (OER) and selective oxygenation of organics, delivering high efficiency under the reported conditions.

What has been the most rewarding or memorable highlight of your career so far? 

Perhaps the most fundamental and important experience in my studies and academic career has been enjoying the academic freedom, to have time for reflection, and to have encountered great creative minds such as the chemists Gerhard Ertl, Omar Yaghi, Gottfried Huttner, Carl Djerrasi, Robert West and the philosophers Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Feyerabend. All of them encouraged me to strive for the 'big' picture. I learned from them the beauty of complexity, to be brave and find ways to decipher it. The history of chemistry teaches us very clearly: none of today's important chemical discoveries were planned. The belief in the necessity of planning and the tendency towards constant evaluation steal time, lead to bureaucratic control, and threaten the freedom of research.

What have been the biggest challenges that you have faced over the course of your time in science, and what have you learned from those experiences? 

When I was appointed to the Technical University of Berlin, the Federal Government and States of Germany launched the Excellence Initiative competition across all disciplines for the first time. Berlin has long been a top location for catalysis research but catalysis is specialised into sub-areas within different disciplines such as chemistry, biology, surface science, and chemical engineering. As a newcomer, I was asked if I would like to launch an initiative that would combine the strengths of chemical and biological catalysis towards unifying concepts in catalysis. We won the competition in 2006 with a consortium consisting of six academic institutions (four universities, two Max Planck Institutes) and about 57 research groups which was successfully funded for 12 years. The biggest challenge was overcoming disciplinary language barriers. The collaboration yielded entirely new disciplinary approaches and produced solutions for developing catalysis chemistry without fossil resources. As an organometallic chemist, I worked alongside enzyme researchers, electrochemists, spectroscopists and engineers. The effort was worthwhile and demonstrated that we can break down disciplinary walls.

What impact would you say that your work is having on your field and/or the wider world? 

The importance and beauty of molecular chemistry cannot be underestimated: The experimental tools and the precision of molecular chemistry is a very solid basis to produce new chemical space on demand and to contribute to the understanding of materials interfaces at large. Taking more advantage of silicon being the second most abundant element of the Earth's crust was always a focus in my research programme. We have shown that the functionality of silicon chemistry can be significantly changed and extended to uncommon low-valent silicon species that act as far more effective tools in metal-free small molecule activation than noble-metal- based catalysts. At the same time, we prepared new types of silicon-metal complexes that serve not only as catalysts as well but also as molecular single-source precursors to give high performance electrocatalysts for alkaline water-splitting and paired electrocatalysis of renewable organic compounds (biorefinery). We believe that our results have created new avenues to energy-saving materials and technologically relevant interfaces of molecules with functional surfaces. 

What is your favourite element and why? 

Silicon is my favourite element. Silicon is a nontoxic semimetal, highly abundant and has named mankind's silicon age. It is still full of chemical, physical and technological surprises. Dealing with silicon compounds with silicon in unusually low oxidation states paves the way to hidden reactivity and functionality beyond carbon (organic) chemistry that are relevant for environmental science and circular chemistry.