Electrophilic Attack on Coordinated Ligands Involved in Catalysis by Organometallic Complexes

Dr. Jack Norton of the Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, is supported by the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry Program of the Chemistry Division to (i) examine the dynamics of hydride ligand exchange with hydrogens of uncoordinated acids; (ii) search for optically active hydride complexes and explore their ability to catalyze enantioselective hydrogenation of prochiral substrates; (iii) explore insertion reactions of nitrogen- and sulfur-containing cyclic reagents into the M-C bond of zirconaaziridines, and related systems, and exploit their dynamics and configurational changes to control the stereochemistry of amino acid derivatives; and (iv) examine the likelihood that electrophilic boranes used to activate olefin polymerization catalysts can also serve as one-electron oxidants.

The significance of the project is manyfold: (i) hydride acceptors from metal centers will be utilized to uncover important new methods for generating reactive cationic metal catalysts, and (ii) studies focussed at understanding the reduction and abstraction properties of fluorinated borane compounds will have a direct bearing on the development of new methods to produce polymers currently in daily production in several industrial facilities. Students and post-doctorate associates will receive excellent training in the area of catalysis and polymer precursor chemistry, the kind of training that will facilitate obtaining good industrial jobs.