03/30/2015

Researchers lay groundwork for developing metal-free catalysts

Recent research from the research group of Professor

Researchers working with Professor Steven Kass have laid the groundwork for developing useful, practical small molecule metal-free catalysts. Their word was just published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

This work entitled, Charge-Enhanced Acidity and Catalyst Activation, reveals that charged substituents enhance acidities and catalytic performance by orders of magnitude in nonpolar solvents. A simple IR spectroscopy approach for obtaining relative acidities in carbon tetrachloride is also reported, and this work lays the ground work for developing a wide range of useful and practical small molecule metal-free catalysts. Read the article.

In addition to Professor Kass, the article was written by Masoud Samet and Yunwen Zhou from the University of Minnesota, and Jordan Buhle from Rippon College in Wisconsin.