VietNamNet Bridge - Being one of the two young scientists nominated for the Ta Quang Buu Award in 2018, at the age of 34, Truong Vu Thanh of Ho Chi Minh City University of Science & Technology has made remarkable achievements with 47 ISI publications and scientific awards.

Mr Truong Vu Thanh

His ‘research work is titled “Azobenzene-containing metal–organic framework as an efficient heterogeneous catalyst for direct amidation of benzoic acids: synthesis of bioactive compounds”.  

The work can help reduce the production costs and fix limitations in the production of the amide functional group, which are found in compounds with biological activity, industrial materials and pharmaceutical ingredients such as Paracetamol or Lipitor®. 

However, the cost of creating these compounds is still very high, because the common method to create them is to activate carboxylic acid into higher-active compounds before reacting with the amines. 

This method requires many stages of processing, thus high production cost. 

Most recently, there have been some reports on using transition metal catalysts for direct reaction without the activation phase. However, the method requires high temperatures and expensive catalysts, while it has narrow application. 

Meanwhile, there has been no report about a catalyst system for preparing valuable substances such as drug ingredients.

Thanh said he began thinking of a solution in 2015. After getting the nod from HCMC National University, Thanh and his co-workers set to carry out some experiments. 

In the same year, the results of their scientific research were published in Chemical Communications, Scimago’s journal ranked Q1 with the impact indicator of 6.10. 

The research team found the process of making Zirconium (Zr). The transition metal is not expensive, but the synthesis of this material is difficult due to the durability of the Zr-O link. Only three types of Zr-MOFs have been successfully synthesized.

The team has also prepared a catalytic system that is superior to previous catalysts on the reaction of amides formation directly from carboxylic acids and amines. 

This is also the first time heterogeneous catalysts can generate such high efficiency of the synthesis of commonly used pharmaceutical ingredients such as Paracetamol, Flutamide, or Procainamide.

Thanh’s finding has also been introduced in SYNFACTS, which specializes in selecting and introducing new research methods which have significance in the field of synthesis and catalysis.

The journals pursue a very strict procedure in selecting and publishing articles. The subjects for selection are ISI published articles in chemistry, and articles in SYNFACTS will receive comments from renowned specialists in the field.

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