New Catalysts as Strategies for Organic Synthesis

I went to the Departmental Seminar on September 12, 2014 where Dr. Simon Meeks talked about his research groups interests in finding new chiral catalysts and catalytic methods for chemical synthesis. The seminar was the most interesting to me because Meeks spoke about something I have never heard before, carbodicarbene. The ligands are able to bind better to transition metals than N-heterocyclic carbenes. His research group works hydroamination of 1,3-Dienes catalyzed by bis(phosphine)carbodicarbene-Rhodium complexes. With my knowledge of Organic Chemistry this was one of the few seminars I was able to understand over 50% of the talk. He specified that they worked with 8 conjugated dienes and used three different schemes to see how everything played out.

I think it is important to note that the research is based on an intermolecular hydroamination, therefore I was able to understand that it was not a reaction that took place within the molecular. Rather the reaction took place between molecules. The lowest yield Meeks presented was 30%, which is pretty good in the case of real life research because sometimes in the lab one can only get trace yields.

Lastly, the thing I appreciated about the talk was that he mentioned mechanisms and how his group was looking to efficiently work through these mechanisms. As we learn in multistep synthesis how to efficiently reach our desired product, that's what he spoke about in his talk just on a larger scale. He also spoke on the reliability of the catalysts, which we haven't dived into that deep this semester yet I understand that a good catalyst is important in a favored reaction. Overall, this talk was full of some dense information, but with all of the things that we learned in class, even at that beginning portion of the semester I was able to understand the talk. Understanding the talk was a big deal for me, because I went to some seminars when I was taking General Chemistry and I was completely lost, now that I'm in Organic it's no problem attending an Organic Chemistry based seminar.