This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This Research award in the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry program supports work by Professor Russell P. Hughes at Dartmouth College to carry out fundamental studies on the chemistry of perfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkylidene compounds of transition metals.
Fluorocarbons are molecules containing carbon-fluorine (C-F) bonds, and play significant roles in the lives of human beings: many pharmaceutical drug molecules and agrochemicals contain these kinds of chemical linkages. New technologically important materials made from fluorinated chemicals include automotive hoses and gaskets, materials for reconstructive surgery, and fuel cell membranes. Positive societal roles of these fluorocarbons are offset by deleterious environmental effects of others; volatile chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere have contributed to ozone depletion and global warming, and are now banned under the Montreal Protocol. Replacement molecules, which contain no environmentally harmful chlorine atoms, are crucially important for future applications as refrigerants, aerosols, foaming agents, and semiconductor cleaning solvents. This project is increasing understanding of how transition metal centers metal centers accomplish two important fundamental processes: breaking carbon-fluorine bonds coupled with making new carbon-hydrogen bonds to give new environmentally benign molecules; and is generating transformational methodology and new reactions of fluorocarbons that are leading to new organic transformations and new technologically useful materials.
Broad human impact of this project continues in training of postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate students, many of whom are continuing to advanced chemistry studies and employment in science. Students at all levels are being educated in written and oral communication, trained in mentoring their junior group colleagues, and are being provided with rich opportunities for engaged learning, which is increasing their interest and knowledge in chemistry. Students are being trained in communicating scientific concepts to broad audiences, and are presenting their research and its societal relevance in Junior Science Cafes held in rural schools in our region (Claremont NH and Windsor VT) that include many economically disadvantaged students. In outreach activities, the capacity of secondary school teachers in our rural region to stay abreast of, and recognize the practical and societal impacts of, new developments in these and other chemistry research areas is being addressed by informal and informative talks at annual meetings of the New Hampshire Science Teachers Association.
This basic research will have future benefits to society by generating new synthetic and catalytic schemes that will provide energy efficient routes to technologically useful molecules, which do not cause atmospheric environmental problems such as global warming and ozone depletion.
