Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Hybrid ligands in mono- and binuclear transition metal complexes offer unique opportunities for applications in homogenous catalysis, materials chemistry and bioinorganic research. The common theme that binds these diverse applications lies in ligand design. The Bierenstiel research group develops new series of hybrid ligands that contain both hard and soft donor atoms, such as nitrogen (N) and sulfur (S), respectively. The targeted N,S-hybrid ligands will be investigated for their hemilability property, a concept pivotal to catalysis, their ability to bind to early (hard) and late (soft) transition metals and their non-innocent redox-activity as these ligands participate actively in electron transfer processes. The conceptual novelty of the Bierenstiel research program is that it represents the first systematic investigation of the fundamental principles of unfolding of a mononuclear chelate to a binuclear complex. The new transition metal complexes have anticipated metal-ligand and metal-metal interactions that can be utilized in applications such as homogenous catalysis, new electronic and magnetic materials, and as biomimetic metalloenzyme models. The central theme of the research program is the design of N,S-hybrid ligands that are accessible through a modular synthetic approach. This modular approach provides also the feasibilty at a primarily undergraduate institution. While initial studies focus predominantly on group 10 metals such as nickel (Ni), palladium (Pd) and platinum (Pt), the research can be expanded to any transition metal, or metal combination, due to the nature of the targeted N,S-hybrid ligands.