New Inorganic Radical Reactions

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Dr. Christopher C. Cummins, Chemistry Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is supported by the Inorganic, Bioinorganic, and Organometallic Chemistry Program of the Chemistry Division under a Faculty Early Career Advancement Award to study radical bond-forming reactions of inorganic compounds and to contribute to several aspects of the MIT teaching program. A major portion of the research is directed toward the design and synthesis of new metal complexes that will undergo clean radical reactions with a variety of inorganic substrates. Examples include Ti(III)-amido species which will react with early transition-metal oxo-complexes to yield heterometallic bridging oxo compounds and with nitrido complexes to form metal-nitrogen-metal units. The teaching plan has several goals including the design of a new course in inorganic chemistry which is based on Nobel Lectures, the institution of an informal seminar series, and service as an undergraduate academic advisor. In many chemical compounds each electron is paired with another. In some, however, this pairing is not complete and compounds which contain one or more unpaired electrons are called `radicals`. While radicals are known to be very reactive, they have not been extensively explored as precursors for inorganic substances. The purpose of this study is to prepare stable metal containing radicals and utilize them to develop new routes to important classes of inorganic compounds. The teaching portion of the project is designed to improve the effectiveness of the chemical education program, mostly in inorganic chemistry, at MIT.