The identification and understanding of the coordination, electronic structure and reactivity of catalytic intermediates is quite important for developing the streamline of chemical syntheses in making useful pharmaceutical, organic materials or even fuels. The author will present her graduate research work from Georgetown University that involved the unraveling of an efficient copper(I) catalyzed C-H bond amination via the study of the electronic structures and reactivity of metal-nitrene intermediates. Postdoctoral research at Johns Hopkins extends her quest for the fundamental understanding of mechanistic catalytic pathways to the oxidation of biologically relevant iron-sulfur sites. Cysteine Dioxygenase is an enzyme that is vital in human metabolic processes that uses oxygen and a three histidine iron(II) site to catalyze the oxidation of cysteine to cysteine sulfinic acid. Non-heme iron(II) thiolate models were synthesized and the mechanism of oxygen activation was investigated. She is currently an active team member in the artificial photosynthesis group at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the field of solar energy research working on understanding proton-coupled electron (PCET) processes of ruthenium(II) water oxidation catalysts. Future research plans will target the design of catalysts relevant to artificial photosynthesis and the activation of small molecules for the understanding of metalloenzyme functions.The work at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is funded under contract DE-AC02-98CH10886 and the work at Houston is funded under contract DE-FG02-07ER15888 with the U.S. Department of Energy and supported by its Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, & Biosciences, Office of Basic Energy Sciences. The BNL authors also thank the U.S Department of Energy for funding under the BES Hydrogen Fuel Initiative.

Capture of elusive catalytic intermediates in transition-metal mediated oxidation of C-H bonds, thiolates, and water

244th National Meeting (2012)

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