Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Our research interests bridge the areas of organometallic and organic chemistry. The Schafer group has developed a new class of complexes that are easily modified and rapidly assembled and that take advantage of inexpensive and low toxicity early transition metals. These complexes use easily assembled N,O chelating ligands, such as amidates and ureates, to realize previously unknown or underexplored coordination compounds for applications in catalysis. 100% Atom economic catalytic synthetic methods are the corner-stone of Green Chemical transformations as they generate absolutely no by-products and minimize energy consumption in the synthesis of useful chemical structures. Our new family of catalysts show remarkable reactivity in selective carbon-nitrogen and carbon-carbon bond forming reactions, important transformations for the fine chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries. On-going catalyst development activities use fundamental structure and bonding analyses, along with mechanistic investigations of the new reactions under development. A detailed understanding of how the reaction proceeds provides valuable insight for catalyst modification for improved performance. Finally, the group employs newly developed catalyst systems for the synthesis of heteroatom-containing small molecules and heterocycles to illustrate the potential advantages that can be realized in using efficient catalytic approaches over traditional synthetic methods. The development of these new catalytic systems builds toward the minimization of waste and the maximization of energy efficiency to result in sustainable methods for industrially relevant chemical transformations.