With this new award the Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry Program supports the work of Professor Anthony J. Arduengo of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, AL. The research will extend the PI's work on the organic chemistry of compounds with unusual valence structures. The primary goals of the research are to prepare exotic new molecules with interesting and useful properties. The PI has been a pioneer in the development of carbenes, structures with a divalent carbon, which are stable at room temperature. These species are both intellectually interesting and important ligands in organometallic catalysts. A number of stable novel di and tri carbenes will be synthesized and their complexes with metals investigated. The ability of these carbenes to coordinate to more than one metal and the electronic communication between the metals will be subject to investigation. Stable carbenes with conventional metal coordination ligands will be synthesized and their ability to coordinate more than one metal in different environments scrutinized. The principles used to render carbenes stable will be extended to other reactive species which are normally not sufficiently stable to permit their isolation. These include molecules containing divalent silicon and germanium, and divalent positively charged nitrogen. These investigations, which will involve integration of theory and experiment, will benefit from the addition of Professor D. A. Dixon, an eminent computational chemist and collaborator with the PI, to the faculty at the University of Alabama
With their synthesis of novel metal-containing molecules, these studies will contribute to the development of new catalysts and organometallic materials. Since Professor Arduengo holds an adjunct appointment at the Technical Universitat in Braunschweig, Germany, this research provides an opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students on these projects to interact with scientists from German laboratories and spend time in a German University. Participants in this research will interact with industrial partners on applications of the technologies that are developed. The research will also involve a collaboration with Professor Daniel Williams and his group of undergraduate researchers at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, GA.
