RUI: Novel Fe Catalysts for Alcohol Amine Coupling Reaction to Imine

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With this award, the Chemical Catalysis Program of the Chemistry Division is funding Professor Keying Ding from Middle Tennessee State University to develop a novel types of earth-abundant catalysts for a useful coupling reaction. The target chemical structures, imines, represent a very important class of compounds with applications in the chemical, pharmaceutical and biological sectors. Currently, such coupling reactions employ precious metal catalysts that are expensive,sometimes toxic, and limited in supply. Thus, the most common approaches today pose economic and often environmental challenges. Developing catalytic processes for such reactions with earth-abundant metal systems is compatible with sustainable chemistry goals. Success here would also likely capture the attention of pharmaceutical process groups and industrial chemists. The broader impacts of the research include training opportunities and hands-on research experiences for undergraduate students, master-level researchers and high school students, including those from underrepresented groups and low-income backgrounds.In this project, Professor Keying Ding is designing, synthesizing and characterizing new types of ligands and their respective defined iron complexes featuring "metal-ligand cooperativities." Professor Ding is studying their catalytic reactivity toward alcohol-amine couplings under mild conditions. In the currently studied system, the ligands not only serve as metal binding sites, but also directly participate in chemical bond activations. The project is exploring the optimal reaction conditions and the substrate scope for alcohols and amines. Important reaction intermediates and catalytic mechanisms are being investigated by combined experimental and theoretical studies, which will enrich fundamental understanding of non-precious metal catalysis for such transformations and will provide new insights into the design of highly selective catalysts.