Transcript Nugget

Compounds of bidentate phosphines with metallocene
backbones: electrochemistry and catalysis.
Chip Nataro, Department of Chemistry, Lafayette College
Catalysts are compounds that provide lower
energy pathways for important chemical
reactions. In some cases, these catalysts need
to be chiral. Chirality is like your left and right
hand; while they are perfect mirror images of
each other, they are different. You can
immediately tell when you try to put a baseball
glove designed for your left hand on your right
hand. The same holds true for many drugs; a
drug has to be the right handedness to interact
with the body in a specific way. To prepare the
proper handedness of a drug in a cost-effective
manner, chiral catalysts must be used. Our
studies investigate the properties of compounds
that are used in these sorts of catalytic
systems. While we do not perform many
catalytic studies, our fundamental investigations
will shed light on why these compounds are
effective catalysts in some cases and not so
effective in other cases.