Date of Award

Spring 2021

Document Type

Thesis

Terms of Use

© 2021 Judah B. Raab. This work is freely available courtesy of the author. It may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. For all other uses, please contact the copyright holder.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Chemistry & Biochemistry Department

First Advisor

Christopher R. Graves

Abstract

Conventional aluminum complexes are incapable of one- and two-electron redox chemistry. As a result, despite being the most abundant metal on Earth, aluminum is seldom used in redox catalysis—one of chemistry’s most impactful fields. We are motivated to break this barrier to provide a green alternative to the countless redox catalysts built around the toxic, mining-intensive platinum-group metals. To create aluminum complexes that do desirable redox chemistry, we coordinate redox-active α-diimine ligands to the metal center. These ligands are stable across multiple oxidation states, allowing for multi-electron redox chemistry for their aluminum complexes. This thesis will report the synthesis of several α-diimine complexes of aluminum, across various ligand substitution patterns and oxidation states. These complexes have been characterized by combinations of X-ray diffraction, multinuclear NMR spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, and density functional theory. For our neutral-ligand compounds, we will report their catalytic activity for the epoxidation of cyclohexene by peracetic acid.

Download

Included in

Chemistry Commons

Share

COinS