Peter Zhang
Boston College, MA·Chemistry
Radicals are highly reactive molecules with an unpaired electron. They can form chemical bonds that are hard to make any other way, but they are notoriously difficult to steer, which tends to give messy mixtures of products.
- Fields
Chemistry
- Topics
metalloradical catalysis
radical chemistry
cobalt catalysis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Design and synthesize D₂-symmetric chiral amidoporphyrin ligands, ring-shaped handed scaffolds, to support cobalt(II) metalloradical catalysts that steer radical reactions.
- Use cobalt catalysts to activate diazirines for stereoselective C–H alkylation, which adds carbon groups directly to ordinary C–H bonds, via alpha-Co(III)-alkyl radical intermediates.
- Develop radical difluoromethylation using (bromodifluoromethyl)trimethylsilane activated by cobalt metalloradical catalysts, proceeding through alpha-Co(III)-difluoromethyl radical intermediates.
- Develop stereoselective aziridination and C–H amination from dioxazolones and bromamine-T via cobalt-bound aminyl radicals. Use experiments and computation to define mechanisms and the origins of selectivity.
More about the research
Gaining control over radical reactions could let chemists build complex molecules, including potential medicines and materials, more precisely and with less waste.
Why it matters
Better control of radical reactions could give chemists safer, more efficient and less resource-intensive ways to make high-value chemicals, materials and potential medicines. It could also support advanced manufacturing. Precise control over a product's 3D shape matters especially for drug molecules, where the two mirror-image forms can behave differently.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
X. Peter Zhang
Boston College, MA·Chemistry
Develop cobalt(II) complexes of D2-symmetric chiral amidoporphyrin ligands as chiral metalloradical catalysts, tuning their electronic, steric and chiral properties to control radical reactivity and stereoselectivity.
Ming Chen
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Chemistry·Early-career
Develop asymmetric transformations of 1,1-bisborylalkanes bearing two chemically distinct boron groups on one carbon, so that each group can be activated separately to attach fragments in a chosen order.
Xiaodong Shi
University of Maryland, MD·Chemistry
Optimize triazole-ruthenium carbene (TA-Ru) catalysts, whose triazole ligands improve heat stability, for olefin metathesis reactions that previous catalysts handled poorly, including high-temperature transformations.
The school
Boston College: 11 labs on PI Pages, $96M a year on research, 161 research doctorates a year.
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