Exploring Unusual Organic Molecules and Unconventional Reactivity at Low Temperatures

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With this renewal award, the Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry Program continues its support of the work of Professor Robert Sheridan of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Nevada, Reno, NV. The research will extend the PI's studies of highly reactive organic molecules trapped on very low temperature inert gas matrices. Experiments designed to generate and investigate molecules that probe the limits of organic stability and reactivity will be carried out. The structure of these matrix-isolated species will be probed with IR and UV/visible spectroscopy. These investigations will be complemented by solution product studies, as well as collaborative time-resolved kinetic investigations. Modern computational chemistry will play a major role, both in aiding the spectroscopic characterization of these systems, and in probing their electronic and structural complexities. Quantum mechanical tunneling in the reactions of these species will be investigated with modern theoretical methods in collaborative efforts. These studies will test the predictive powers of modern theoretical methods in reactions dominated by tunneling from lowest quantum levels. These investigations of high-energy organic reactive intermediates are expected provide important fundamental information that will impact upon interstellar chemistry, photoaffinity labeling of biological systems, combustion, soot formation, fullerene production, new anticancer/antibiotic agents, photolithography, magnetic materials, and organic synthesis. The results of this work will provide an important perspective on the potential for quantum mechanical tunneling, a phenomenon that is important in a very wide variety of systems, ranging from enzyme kinetics to interstellar reactions. The investigations will offer especially broad training for students in organic synthesis, sophisticated spectroscopy, physical organic techniques, and modern theoretical methodology.