Major
Chemistry
Anticipated Graduation Year
2025
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
Ammonia production is a process that is integral to a variety of industries ranging from agriculture, textiles, and pesticide production. The Haber-Bosch process has supplied the global demand for ammonia since the beginning of the 20th century, but presents the issue of being incredibly energetically costly. The catalytic reduction of ambient atmospheric dinitrogen is a potential solution to the issue presented by the Haber-Bosch process and through the use of organometallic compounds inspired by the bacterial family of nitrogenases, there is potential for much more energy efficient production of ammonia. A series of iron complexes bearing CNC-pincer ligands have previously been synthesized in this lab and have shown the potential to catalytically reduce dinitrogen to ammonia. Computational analysis was used to further elucidate the mechanistic conversion of complex 1 to complex 2. Further, complexes 7 and 8 were probed by running a series of reactions to better study N2 as a labile ligand.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Dr. Wei-Tsung Lee
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Mechanistic and Reactivity Studies of Iron Complexes Supported by CNC-Pincer Ligand
Ammonia production is a process that is integral to a variety of industries ranging from agriculture, textiles, and pesticide production. The Haber-Bosch process has supplied the global demand for ammonia since the beginning of the 20th century, but presents the issue of being incredibly energetically costly. The catalytic reduction of ambient atmospheric dinitrogen is a potential solution to the issue presented by the Haber-Bosch process and through the use of organometallic compounds inspired by the bacterial family of nitrogenases, there is potential for much more energy efficient production of ammonia. A series of iron complexes bearing CNC-pincer ligands have previously been synthesized in this lab and have shown the potential to catalytically reduce dinitrogen to ammonia. Computational analysis was used to further elucidate the mechanistic conversion of complex 1 to complex 2. Further, complexes 7 and 8 were probed by running a series of reactions to better study N2 as a labile ligand.