Breaking it and fixing it: new chemistry with nitrogen

Atmospheric N2 is a cheap, abundant resource with great potential for energy storage and chemical synthesis, but it is difficult to convert it into other compounds (“fixing” nitrogen). This seminar will describe some challenges and opportunities of nitrogen fixation, as well as my students’ discoveries of how to break the N-N bond of N2 using homogeneous transition-metal complexes. More recently, we have identified a new mechanism for sequential C-H activation and N-N activation to create C-N bonds. Detailed mechanistic studies reveal a cyclic reaction, which gives a route from atmospheric N2 and petroleum-derived arenes to substituted anilines. This is an important step toward preparing useful chemicals using air as a starting material.

Speaker: Patrick Holland, Yale University