Due to their large-scale production by the oil refinement industry, alkenes are some of the most ubiquitous starting materials in organic chemistry. The synthesis of many building block chemicals can be traced back to an alkene functionalization reaction. One alkene functionalization that remains underexplored is the introduction of amides. Amide formation is incredibly important, as it is the most common functional group found in bioactive molecules, and amide bond formation is the most common reaction in medicinal chemistry. My thesis will discuss several new methodologies for converting simple alkene starting materials into value-added amide products. First, I will talk about an anti-Markovnikov alkene hydroamidation procedure. Next, I will talk about leveraging chain walking to enable remote hydroamidation of internal alkenes. Finally, I will talk about alkene difunctionalization via nucleometalation to yield heterocyclic products with amides appended. In addition to reaction development, much of the talk will focus on elucidating and studying the mechanisms of each of these transformations.

The hydroformylation of 1-octene with supported ionic liquid phase catalyst was demonstrated when using a system involving the substrate, reacting gases and products in CO₂ and N₂ flow over a fixed bed supported ionic liquid phase catalyst (silica gel and carbon aerogels as solid support respectively) at different system pressures. Yields, reaction rates, selectivities and rhodium leaching were all monitored. A pressure of CO₂ flow just below the critical point of the flowing mixture (106 bar at 100 °C if no 1-octene has been converted) was the best condition for the hydroformylation. It gave the highest acitivity (conversion to aldehyde up to 70 %), fastest reaction (TOF up to 575.3 h⁻¹) and best stable selectivity ( l:b ratio reaching 3.37 ). The utilization of scCO₂ as reaction media leads to remarkable stability of the catalyst. The supercritical or near critical (expanded liquid) system completely overcame the progressive decrease in activity of catalyst at 50, 75 bar with liquid phase transport and also showed much better results than when using other gas flows such as N₂ flow at 100 bar. In the high pressure scCO₂ phase, the concentration of 1-octene at the catalyst bed was reduced so that the conversion to aldehyde was reduced. The pore size and surface groups of the solid support should be suitable for the SILP catalyst consisting of metal complex, excess ligand and ionic liquid. Using microporous carbon aerogels as the supports, whether activated or not, gave disappointing results.

published_or_final_version / Chemistry / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Chemistry / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Chemistry / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Chemistry / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Chemistry / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

No description available.

This dissertation describes a study of the electronic structure of some selected cyclopentadienyl metal olefin, (mu)-alkylidene, and carbonyl complexes. While most studies of this type are largely theoretical in nature, this work relies on the experimental observations which result from the application of photoelectron spectroscopy to the measurements of the important molecular energies of these compounds. The first part of the discussion is a study of metal-olefin bonding in the CpM(CO)₂L (L = C₂H₄, C₃H₆) compounds. Of particular interest are the observed changes in ionization energies of the olefin (pi) orbital upon coordination. These results also allow a comparison of the coordination of CO and C₂H₄. The valence ionizations of μ-CH₂-[(C₅H₄CH₃)Mn(CO)₂]₂ are also presented. This example of the increasingly important μ-alkylidene complexes provides evidence of a 3C-6e configuration with a net Mn-Mn single bond. The final chapter describes a study of the valence electronic structure of the CpM(CO)₂ (M = Co, Rh; Cp = η⁵-C₅H₅⁻) and η⁵-C₅(CH₃)₅⁻ ) system. This group of four closely related molecules demonstrates how photoelectron spectroscopy can be used to monitor the electronic effects of specific chemical modifications. The intent throughout is to not only present a detailed analysis of the specific compounds chosen for this study, but to also further demonstrate the applicability of photoelectron spectroscopy to a broad spectrum of problems concerning the structural and electronic make-up of organometallic molecules.

This study is a systematic investigation of the parameters and conditions necessary for photo-induced radical copolymerizations of donor olefins with acceptor olefins in the absence of an initiator. Very few cases have been previously reported and no mechanistic details of the initiation have been proposed in the literature. Our results show that the photoinitiation depends on the relative donor and acceptor strengths of the monomers, as well as the solvent. The highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) of the donor and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) of the acceptor must be at the appropriate energy levels in order to produce a radical initiating species upon photoexcitation of the electron donor-acceptor (EDA) complex. If the donor-acceptor interaction is too weak, no copolymerization occurs. The excited complex (contact ion pair) presumably decays back to the ground state faster than producing an initiating species. If the donor-acceptor interaction is too strong, the excited complex dissociates to the free ions which could initiate ionic homopolymerization rather than radical copolymerization. The solvent may also determine the course of the reaction. In two cases, copolymerizations, which could be photo-induced in 1,2-dichloroethane, could not be photo-induced in acetonitrile. Dissociation of the excited complex (contact ion pair) is favored in polar solvents, such as acetonitrile, which are able to stabilize the ion radicals. This initiation method produces high molecular weight copolymers that may be cast into transparent films.