Biradical-like Reactive Intermediates

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Intellectual Merit. Professor Michl and his collaborators will work on reactive intermediates, new reactions, and new structures in the area of alkylated derivatives of the icosahedral carborane cage CB11 and will examine their broader implications. They will investigate the scope and mechanism of new reactions that were discovered in the current grant period, apply new techniques for the characterization of their intermediates, elucidate the observed substituent effects on carbon acidity and explore a new group of compounds in which a main group metal is attached to the cage carbon. They will pursue the synthesis of novel oligomeric structures that ultimately promise facile three-dimensional hole hopping and could be useful as a source of a new kind of conducting polymers. Finally, they will pursue the use of especially inert anions derived from the CB11 cage by partial trifluoromethylation and partial fluorination for the production and characterization of simple cations that may be known from gas phase studies but lie beyond the current horizon of solution chemistry of isolable compounds, such as H3+, SiH5+, SiH3+, or Zn2++. Broader Impacts. The project involves undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students and will take place in a research group that has traditionally promoted the education of women and active international contacts and is highly interdisciplinary in scope. Collaboration with physicists has been common and the presently proposed work involves organic, inorganic, physical, and theoretical chemistry. The group's activities include many international collaborations, and each graduate student is expected to spend a few months performing research abroad. Workshops and conferences will be organized, some abroad. The activities have traditionally involved collaborations with industry and national laboratories and will continue to do so. The results will be broadly disseminated. The PI is the editor of a major review journal, for which he also often writes contributions. Traditional journal publication of articles and reviews is complemented by articles in trade journals. In addition to lecturing to professionals, the PI and group members give public lectures and lectures to K-12 students, domestically and abroad, on the radio and TV. Some of the international activity occurs in the Czech Republic, the PI's country of origin, where he has a part-time appointment. General benefits to society go well beyond the training of competent scientists. Some of the past scientific discoveries have been taken up by industry (Li+ catalysis of alkene polymerization, for example), and it is expected that some of the efforts proposed presently will as well (possibly new kinds of electrically conducting solids for solar cell or molecular electronics, and possibly new materials for the production of plastic electronics).