Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Chemistry / Christopher J. Levy / A series of chiral titanium and manganese complexes with helix-directing salen ligands have been prepared, characterized and studied. Their structures displayed as a chiral helical motif as expected. And it was also found that all M(salen) units were exclusively M-helimeric in the solid state, except Ti(cyclohexyl-benz[a]anthryl) as P-helix. This may be due to the energy difference between P and M helice, which enables crystal packing forces to control and drive the molecular structure. This is also in agreement with the previous computational studies that the M configuration predominates in THF solution. All metal centers adopt a cis-β octahedral geometry except in Mn(binapthyl-phenanthryl-salen). Most of M(salen) complexes in this work afforded μ–oxo dinuclear helicates, instead of the expected monohelicate, except Mn(binapthyl-phenanthryl-salen), which is bridged by a third salen ligand. The titanium salt affected the complex solution behavior. In the presence of Cl[superscript]-, only mononuclear species was found by ESI-MS, while both di- and mononuclear species was found in MeOH in the presence of –O[superscript]iPr. The NMR spectra of Ti(salen) indicated one major species with cis-β geometry exist in most solution, which could be monomer or dimer, except Ti(binapthyl-salen). No counterions have been found in the solid state of Mn(salen) complexes in this work, but they affected the ligand decomposition in the solution in Mn(binapthyl-phenanthryl-salen). The Mn(salen) complexes could effectively and enatioselectively catalyze the asymmetric epoxidation of somoe trans, cis and terminal olefin, and various oxidants were employed.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Chemistry / Kenneth J. Klabunde / Solar energy driven catalytic systems have gained popularity in environmental remediation recently. Various photocatalytic systems have been reported in this regard and most of the photocatalysts are based on well-known semiconducting material, Titanium Dioxide, while some are based on other materials such as Silicon Dioxide and various Zeolites. However, in titania based photocatalysts, titania is actively involved in the catalytic mechanism by absorbing light and generating exitons. Because of this vast popularity of titania in the field of photocatalysis it is believed that photocatalysis mainly occurs via non-localized mechanisms and semiconductors are extremely important. Even though it is still rare, photocatalysis could be localized and possible without use of a semiconductor as well. Thus, to support localized photocatalytic systems, and to compare the activity to titania based systems, degradation of organic air pollutants by nanostructured silica, titania and mixed silica titania systems were studied. New materials were prepared using two different approaches, precipitation technique (xerogel) and aerogel preparation technique. The prepared xerogel samples were doped with both metal (silver) and non-metals (carbon and sulfur) and aerogel samples were loaded with Chromium, Cobalt and Vanadium separately, in order to achieve visible light photocatalytic activity. Characterization studies of the materials were carried out using Nova BET analysis, DR UV-vis spectrometry, powder X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron Spectroscopy, FT-IR spectroscopy, Transmission Electron Microscopy, etc. Kinetics of the catalytic activities was studied using a Shimadzu GCMS-QP 5000 instrument using a closed glass reactor. All the experiments were carried out in gaseous phase using acetaldehyde as the model pollutant. Kinetic results suggest that chromium doped silica systems are good UV and visible light active photocatalysts. This is a good example for a localized photocatalytic activity. In contrast, our xerogel system shows comparatively high visible light photocatalytic activity for the titania based system, showing the importance of non-localized nature of photocatalysis. The Cobalt doped silica system shows interesting dark catalytic activity towards acetaldehyde and several other pollutants. Thus, in summary, based on the different activities we observed during our studies these materials could be successfully used to improve the quality of both indoor and outdoor air.