Synthetic, Mechanistic, and Catalytic Actinide Organometallic Chemistry

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This award from the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry Program provides renewed support for a project concerned with the organometallic chemistry of the actinide and lanthanide elements. The actinide elements include the very heavy metals, such as uranium, whereas the lanthanide elements, also known as the "rare earths," include the less familiar metals, such as neodynium and yttrium which find practical uses in lasers. These elements are of substantial current interest to organometallic chemists because they have been found to react in unusual and synthetically useful ways with organic compounds. The project is a broad exploration of the chemical properties and mechanisms of reactions of organometallic compounds of the f-group elements. The goal is to develop and understand new chemistry based on the unusual structural and thermodynamic properties and reactivity of these metal ions. Chemical transformations (both stoichiometric and catalytic) to be studied include metal-centered H-H, C-H and C-C activation processes, as well as olefin insertion, modification and oligomerization processes. Emphasis will be placed also on the synthesis and properties of complexes having new types of ligands and new formal oxidation states. The long range goal is to understand those structural and electronic factors which control chemical reactivity of these elements, and to capitalize on features which stimulate new or enhanced modes of reactivity.