An Example of the Educational Diversity Available in the Evans Group

An Example of the Educational Diversity Available in the Evans Group

Since the Evans Group is interested in all aspects of the unique properties of the lanthanide elements, we are interested in many types of chemistry. This allows students to sample several types of activity as they are developing their philosophy of how to do science and getting their Ph.D. degree.

A good example of the diverse experience obtainable in the Evans Group comes from a student who joined the group to use lanthanides in organic synthesis. A summary of this student's Ph.D. activities follows.

The student's initial project involved the use of lanthanides in organic synthesis. This resulted in three papers:

¨ "Ketone Coupling with Alkyl Iodides, Bromides, and Chlorides using Thulium Diiodide: A More Powerful Version of SmI2(THF)x/HMPA" Journal of the American Chemical Society 2000, 122, 2118-2119.

¨ "The Availability of Dysprosium Diiodide as a Powerful Reducing Agent in Organic Synthesis: Reactivity Studies and Structural Analysis of DyI2(DME)3 and Its Naphthalene Reduction Product" Journal of the American Chemical Society 2000, 122,11749-11750.

¨ "Utility of Neodymium Diiodide as a Reductant in Ketone Coupling Reactions" Organic Letters, 2003, 5, 2041-2042.

This project then evolved to studying some organometallic chemistry that involved the synthesis of the first example of a new type of metallocene and an inorganic reaction, the reduction of dinitrogen:

¨ "Expanding Divalent Organolanthanide Chemistry: The First Organothulium(II) Complex and the In Situ Organodysprosium(II) Reduction of Dinitrogen" Angewandte Chemie, International Edition in English 2002, 41, 359-361 (VIP).

¨ "Facile Dinitrogen Reduction Via Organometallic Tm(II) Chemistry" Journal of the American Chemical Society 2001, 123, 7927-7928.

Finally, this student became interested in polymerization:

¨ "Polymerization of Isoprene by a Single Component Lanthanide Catalyst Precursor" Macromolecules, 2003, 36, 4256-4257.

Along the way, the student also got involved in some solid state preparative chemistry and some organometallic reactivity involving hydrolysis. Two more papers followed from those activities:

¨ "A Large Scale Synthesis of Dysprosium and Neodymium Diiodides" Inorganic Chemistry, 2003, 42, 3097-3099.

¨ "Hydrolytic Reactivity of a Samarium(II) Organometallic Complex: Synthesis and Structure of a Hexametallic Organosamarium Oxide Hydroxide, [(C5Me5)Sm]6O9H6" Organometallics 2001, 20, 2936-2937.