The Organic Synthesis Program is supporting the work of Prof. Anthony Barrett of Northwestern University. Prof. Barrett is studying how metals connected to carbon, organometallic compounds, can provide unique methods for preparing structurally complex molecules. The project will study the details of how these organometallic compounds react, and the limitations of their use. Special attention will focus on methods for making chemical ring compounds. Ring-containing compounds are common to Nature, and one of the important missions of organic chemists is to find new ways to build, in the laboratory, the kinds of compounds that can be found in Nature. The application of cationic iron?II! vinylidene reagents to the construction of a diversity of heterocyclic and carbocyclic molecules will be investigated. The reactions will be focused on novel cyclization approaches to heterocyclic and carbocyclic rings. The research will explore the fundamental questions of the mode of reactivity of the organometallic reagents. As the scope of the newly-developing technology becomes known, the methods will be applied to designing efficient routes to molecular skeletons of interest to synthetic organic chemists.
