With this Award, the Chemical Synthesis Program of the NSF Division of Chemistry is supporting the research of Professor Bandar at Colorado State University. Professor Bandar and his students are developing new chemical reactions and reagents that provide scientists with more efficient and sustainable access to compounds integral to the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries. To accomplish these objectives, the research group is using neutral organic compounds that possess strong basicity, termed superbases, to address longstanding challenges in synthetic chemistry. In one application, the Bandar lab is employing superbases as catalysts for reactions that directly transform commodity chemicals, such as alcohols, amines and olefins, into highly valued product classes. In another application, the Bandar lab is addressing the practical challenge of using highly reactive bases by developing air-stable starting materials that provide chemists on-demand access to superbases. These reagents have the potential to improve the practicality and sustainability of many of the most-used reactions in the chemical industry. As the educational component of this project, the Bandar lab is creating informational materials on the properties of strong bases and their compatibilities with different classes of chemicals. These materials will provide chemists with useful guides for base-promoted chemistry and help undergraduate students learn acid-base concepts from a real-world perspective. Professor Bandar is also preparing and distributing media that highlights Colorado-based chemistry careers in an effort to increase the number of local students pursuing postsecondary STEM degrees.
The Bandar lab is developing a variety of new synthetic capabilities that are enabled by the unique properties of organic superbases. In one application, the Bandar lab is developing base-catalyzed additions of heteroatom nucleophiles to styrene derivatives as a direct route to aryl-containing ethers, alcohols and amines. Although superbases are emerging as an attractive and often uniquely effective class of base in modern synthesis, their cost and air sensitivity prevents their widespread use. To address this challenge, the Bandar lab is creating air-stable reagents that release superbases when desired for general use in deprotonation reactions. In another goal, the lab is optimizing catalysis of superbase-promoted alkylation and substitution reactions, thus eliminating the need for stoichiometric quantities of superbases. These targeted developments could greatly improve the practicality and applications of organic superbase chemistry, thus improving access to valuable organic compounds.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
