RUI: Gas Phase Studies of Organic Reaction Mechanisms

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This research will use a combination of experimental and computational techniques to study fundamental organic reactions in the gas phase. While it has long been recognized that investigations of gas phase organic reactions using mass spectrometric techniques yield valuable information, studies have often been hampered by the fact that the organic products are not charged and hence invisible in a mass spectrometer. Professor Gronert will circumvent this problem by employing dianions as reactants to study two of the most important reactions in organic chemistry, SN2 substitutions and E2 eliminations. These studies will be extended to systems designed to probe the effect of ion pairs in these reactions. In this way, an important bridge between gas phase and solution reactions will be constructed.With this Research at Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) Award, the Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry Program supports the research of Scott Gronert of San Francisco State University. Professor Gronert is investigating reactions of organic compounds in the gas phase. Since these studies are carried out in the absence of complicating solvent molecules, they have the potential to reveal the nature of the fundamental interactions governing these reactions. The data obtained in these studies will be compared to that resulting from computational models allowing an assessment of the reliability of such computational models. The involvement and training of undergraduate and masters students is an integral part of this project, which has been designed to give these students experience in modern chemical techniques.