Aaron Aponick
University of Georgia, GA·Chemistry
Many molecules come in two mirror-image forms, much like left and right hands, and those forms can behave very differently in medicines, crop chemicals and materials. Chemists therefore want reactions that make mostly one "hand" of a product.
- Fields
Chemistry
- Topics
asymmetric catalysis
enantioselective synthesis
palladium catalysis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2027
What they work on
- Identify Pd(II)-StackPhos catalysts, palladium paired with a chiral imidazole-based biaryl ligand, that give high mirror-image selectivity in alkene 1,2-difunctionalization for both syn- and anti-addition.
- Use mechanistic probes to determine whether the two new groups add to the same or opposite faces of the double bond, and how the catalyst recognizes a single olefin face.
- Develop enantioselective endo-mode cyclizations that build carbon rings, complementing the more established exo-mode ring-forming reactions.
- Extend these palladium-catalyzed difunctionalization reactions to alternative substrates that may yield additional useful enantioenriched products.
More about the research
This project develops such reactions using palladium catalysts, metal complexes that speed up a reaction without being consumed. The targets are olefins (alkenes), cheap building blocks containing a carbon-carbon double bond that are starting points for both bulk and fine chemicals.
Why it matters
Single-handed molecules are central to pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals and compounds used in clean-energy technologies. A dependable palladium-catalyzed route from simple alkenes to such products could give academic and industrial chemists a more efficient way to build them, and the mechanistic studies could clarify which factors control selectivity in this family of reactions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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.
Ramesh Giri
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Chemistry
Develop transition-metal-catalyzed difunctionalization of alkenes bearing simple functional groups, using a dual ligand system of electron-deficient alkenes and organic nitriles to stabilize intermediates and promote C(sp3)–C(sp3) bond formation.
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.
The school
University of Georgia: 27 labs on PI Pages, $628M a year on research, 598 research doctorates a year.
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