Prestigious Eni Award for Würzburg Chemistry Professor Holger Braunschweig

Since 2007, the Italian oil and energy company Eni has awarded a prize for outstanding research achievements worldwide that aim to reduce the consumption of energy and raw materials and minimise environmental impact. Chemistry Professor Holger Braunschweig from Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg is one of the 2024 prize winners.

What the JMU professor is being honoured for: He has developed new methods that have the potential to produce fertilisers, pharmaceuticals and other nitrogen compounds more sustainably – without the use of heavy metals, with lower energy consumption and fewer waste products.

The Würzburg chemist will receive the Eni Award in the “Advanced Environmental Solutions” category. He will be presented with the award on 15 October 2024 in Rome at a ceremony with the Italian President. At 200,000 euros, the Eni Prize is one of the most highly endowed industrial science prizes in the world. Holger Braunschweig is free to use the prize money as he wishes.

“Around 30 years ago, we began investigating a special class of boron compounds, known as borylenes, which now enable the activation of nitrogen. I am delighted that this work, carried out by my students and colleagues, has now been recognised in this way,” says the professor.

Holger Braunschweig’s Outstanding Research

Almost all nitrogen-containing chemicals, including synthetic plant fertilisers based on ammonia or nitrate, are produced by the industrial conversion of atmospheric nitrogen using the Haber-Bosch process. This process consumes a huge amount of energy, estimated at one to two per cent of global electricity generation. It also produces a lot of waste, some of which is toxic, due to the transition metals used as catalysts.

About ten years ago, Holger Braunschweig’s team discovered boron-containing molecules with unique properties similar to those of transition metals: they can bind and activate inert molecules such as atmospheric nitrogen. The research group quickly realised that the novel boron molecules could open the way to a more sustainable alternative to the Haber-Bosch process.

Groundbreaking Publications

In an article published in Science in 2018, the JMU research group showed that Holger Braunschweig’s boron molecules facilitate nitrogen activation and reduction on boron. The following year, a second article in Science presented the world’s first coupling of two nitrogen molecules. In a 2020 article in Nature Chemistry, the JMU team then presented a simple synthesis of ammonia without transition metals and the full chemical identification of each intermediate in the process.

The scientific community immediately categorised these results as groundbreaking: The 2018 article was cited almost 800 times by other researchers in the five years following its publication.

The systems developed by Holger Braunschweig’s team are still a long way from industrial application. Nevertheless, they provide a basis for producing nitrogen-containing molecules with fewer synthesis steps, less (toxic) waste and lower energy consumption.

Braunschweig’s concept also laid the foundation for a sharp increase in research in this field worldwide. It should therefore only be a matter of time before the fruits of his research reach industry.