Functionalized pyrazines as ligands for minor actinide extraction and catalysis

The research presented in this thesis concerns the design of ligands for a wide range of applications, from nuclear waste treatment to catalysis. The strategies employed to design actinide-selective extractants, for instance, comprise the fine tuning of the ligand electronic properties as well as use of the multivalency concept. The design of novel phosphines for rhodium catalysts involved, in addition to the above mentioned, tuning of the ligand solubility in the desired solvent. The pyrazine core was chosen as the bse for a ligand scaffold construction because of its unique electronic properties, which in their turn are responsible for it's, to a certain extent, unusual chemistry.