Project Description

We are seeking a postdoctoral fellow to work at the interface of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis. Heterogeneous catalysts are commonly used in large-scale processes that produce fuels and commodity chemicals. However, they rarely exhibit the specificity and selectivity required of chemical transformations relevant to agrochemical and pharmaceutical synthesis. The overarching goal of this project is to design precisely engineered active sites in order to mediate selective oxidation, reduction, and carbon–carbon coupling reactions of complex organic substrates. Catalyst design approaches will include immobilizing molecular complexes on solid supports, designing single site catalysts with well-defined steric and electronic properties, and leveraging the size exclusion properties of porous materials such as zeolites. We anticipate that these catalysts will be complementary to homogeneous catalysts but exhibit additional desirable properties such as higher stability, recyclability, and compatibility with continuous flow reactors.

This project will be a collaboration between the Gounder and Uyeda research groups, which have extensive expertise in heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis, respectively. The postdoctoral fellow participating in this project will be involved in synthesizing new catalytic materials, exploring applications for chemical synthesis, and studying reaction kinetics and mechanisms. This postdoctoral fellow will gain exposure to contemporary research problems in agrochemical and pharmaceutical synthesis.

Start Date

June 2021

Post-Doc Qualifications

PhD training in experimental homogeneous or heterogeneous catalysis 

Co-Advisors

Rajamani Gounder, rgounder@purdue.edu, Chemical Engineering, https://sites.google.com/site/rgounder/

Christopher Uyeda, cuyeda@purdue.edu, Chemistry, https://www.chem.purdue.edu/uyeda/ 

References

Zhou, Y.-Y.; Uyeda, C.* “Catalytic Reductive [4 + 1]-Cycloadditions of Vinylidenes and Dienes.” Science 2019, 363, 857–862.

Hartline, D. R.; Zeller, M.; Uyeda, C.* “Catalytic Carbonylative Rearrangement of Norbornadiene via Dinuclear Carbon–Carbon Oxidative Addition” J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2017, 139, 13672–13675.

Paolucci, C.; Khurana, I.; Parekh, A. A.; Li, S.; Shih, A. J.; Li, H.; Di Iorio, J. R.; Albarracin-Caballero, J. D.; Yezerets, A.; Miller, J. T.; Delgass, W. N.; Ribeiro, F. H.; Schneider, W. F.*; Gounder, R.*;

"Dynamic Multinuclear Sites Formed by Mobilized Copper Ions in NOx Selective Catalytic Reduction", Science, 2017, 357, 898-903.