Research Projects

The selective oxidative functionalization of strong C-H bonds in hydrocarbons is an economically and environmentally important chemical transformation process. The chemical, pharmaceutical and materials industries exploit vast quantities of chemicals derived from abundant saturated hydrocarbons from oil and natural gas feedstocks. A considerable functionalization is required before use of such hydrocarbons, which is very challenging at ambient reaction conditions because of the inert nature of C-H bond. The strength of C-C and C-H bonds render them relatively inert to functionalization. Generally, saturated hydrocarbons are functionalized under forcing conditions, for example by combustion with O₂, by reaction with super acids or by cracking, all under extremes of temperature. Because of extreme of condition requirements, these reactions are non-selective, and often yield highly undesirable by-products at great energetic, financial, and environmental cost. The mild and selective functionalization of saturated hydrocarbons thus remains a great modern challenge. However, nature employs an array of metalloenzymes for oxidative activation of saturated hydrocarbon very effectively and efficiently under ambient reaction conditions, leading to hydroxylation, desaturation, C-X bond formation (X = O, N, S), and halogenation. Though, there are few reports on biomimetic/bioinspired reactions of recently developed metal-hydroxo/oxyl/halide complexes, but Scientists have very little attention on the bioinspired oxidative reactions by transition metal-pseudohalide (e.g., CN, N₃, SCN) complexes, and reaction mechanisms have also not been well studied. Therefore, in this project, the high valent first row late transition metal-pseudohalide (M = Co, Ni, Cu; pseudohalide = CN, N₃, SCN) complexes will be developed and checked their reactivity including mechanistic investigations. Developing bioinspired transition metal pseudohalide complexes to understand biological reaction mechanisms and to design catalysts relevant to the current energy challenge are aimed in this project. It is expected that these systems can be very useful bioinspired catalysts for selective oxidative C-H functionalization reactions due to the presence of different reactivity nature of the terminal pseudohalide ligands. Furthermore, reaction mechanisms associated with oxidative reactions could well be understood by studying reactivity of such oxidants having different terminal pseudohalides.