Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The development of ""Green Chemistry"", or environmentally benign chemistry, is an area of increasing significance in today's society. Green Chemistry is aimed at the reduction or elimination of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture, application, and disposal of chemical products. These goals can be achieved, in part, by increasing reaction yields, rates, and selectivities. Other key components of any ""green"" process include the ability to recycle and reuse unused reactants, catalysts and solvents while avoiding release of harmful volatile organic compounds (VOC's). Room Temperature Ionic Liquids (RTILs) are a new class of polar, non-coordinating solvents that are typically composed of an organic cation and an inorganic anion and are liquids at or below room temperature. Our group is concerned with the exploitation of the beneficial ""green"" properties of these inherently non-volatile solvents. The four main areas of ionic liquid research that are making valuable contributions to industry and hence society are their development as replacement solvents, use in separations, catalysis, and new materials. Our overall program addresses all of these areas of interest through our activities in the four sub-categories of our program: (1) The design, synthesis, and characterization of new ionic liquids for use as alternative solvents and materials.; (2) Development of functionalized RTILs for use in metal separations or in the preparation of RTIL-metal complexes that have potential use as easily recycled, immobilized homogeneous catalysts for important organic reactions.; (3) Adaptation of bimetallic addition reactions with unsaturated substrates to RTIL systems.; (4) Organometallic synthetic methodology development. RTILs will afford novel reaction conditions affording higher yields of single products while being recyclable and reusable. They are excellent candidates for replacements to industrially used solvents as reaction media, in separations and catalysis, and the development of new materials; herein RTILs have their highest potential impact.