Organic Chemistry Seminar

Tuesday, November 6th
Professor Peter Schreiner
"Discovering Metal-Free Organic Reactions"

4:15pm - 5:15pm
Braun Lecture Hall
S.G.Mudd Chemistry Building
Stanford University


This seminar is free and open to the public. All Stanford University Chemistry students are encouraged to attend this special event.

About the Seminar:
Metal-free reactions that have long been known under the header "organocatalysis" combine the concepts of molecular recognition and supramolecular chemistry with enzyme-like catalytic concepts; this branch of research may therefore be coined with the notion of “the hunt for the smallest enzyme.”[1] This approach circumvents the use of often toxic metals, and the preparation of the catalysts is much easier as it relies on the well-developed synthetic arsenal for tailor-making organic structures. While many approaches rely on covalent attachment of the catalyst, the talk will focus entirely on non-covalently bound catalysts.[2] While we have developed hydrogen-bonding thiourea-based catalysts that are effective in catalyzing Diels-Alder reactions,[2] acid-free acetalizations,[3] and many other reactions, epoxide openings[4] will be emphasized in the first half of the talk.

Phase-transfer catalysis (PTC) is a special case of organocatalysis that has been around for several decades. Our aim was to develop completely novel PTC reactions, for instance, metal-free PTC radical reactions for the direct halogenation of unactivated hydrocarbons.[5] This shows the power of the organocatalytic approach as some of these reactions are not even feasible with their organometallic counterparts. Applications of metal-free methods to the functionalization of nanodiamonds will be presented. These structures, now accessible in large quantities from crude oil, bear enormous potential for materials with novel properties.[6] Some of their applications will be highlighted.


About Schreiner:
Peter R. Schreiner is professor and head of the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen and adjunct professor of chemistry at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA. He studied chemistry in his native city, at the University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, where he received his Dipl. Chem. (1992) and Dr. rer. nat. (1994) in organic chemistry with P. v. R. Schleyer. Simultaneously, he received a Ph.D. (1995) with Henry F. Schaefer III in computational chemistry from the University of Georgia. He completed his Habilitation at the University of Göttingen (1999) in the group of A. de Meijere. Before accepting Liebig's chair in Giessen in 2002, he was first associate, then full professor of chemistry at the University of Georgia (1999-2002). P. R. Schreiner is the 2003 recipient of the Dirac Medal of the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists. Amongst other awards, he also received the Prize of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Universitätsprofessoren für Chemie for Habilitanden (assistant professors) 1999, was a Liebig-Fellow (1997-1999) of the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie, and held a Habilitandenstipendium of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (1999). He currently serves as an assistant editor for the Journal of Computational Chemistry and as a section editor and the coordinator for the Encyclopedia of Computational Chemistry. P. R. Schreiner is director of the TransMit Center for Functionalized Nanodiamonds. Also see: www.transmit.de and www.nanodiamonds.com

Questions
Please contact Patricia Dwyer at 650-723-4770.