Supercritical Fluid Chromatography for Research on Asymmetric Catalytic Alkene Functionalization
Abstract
The development of next-generation energetic materials, including explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics, to support national defense requires advanced synthetic capabilities. Specially, the ability to rapidly synthesize, isolate, and characterize families of densely functionalized target molecules with predictable and programmable selectivity is of paramount importance. With this proposalwe seek to obtain state-of-the-art chiral separation technology to expedite synthetic methodology research in our laboratory gearedtowards energetic materials discovery and development. Our research seeks to develop new synthetic methods to convert alkenes, a type of readily available chemical feedstock, into novel energetic materials through use of transition metal catalysis. Once fully developed, this synthetic toolkit will facilitate rapid prototyping of new energetic materials and reduce the cost and environmental impact of large-scale production. A key feature of this toolkit is the abilityto control regio- and stereoselectivity of the constituent transformations, which grants access to products with distinct connectivities and/or stereochemistries. In the early phase of development, new organic reactions often proceed with suboptimal selectivity, which is improved through reaction optimization that is informed by detailed analysis of crude mixtures of products and byproducts. A pervasive bottleneck in our work is that chiral analysis of product mixtures is typically time-, cost-, and labor-intensive owing to limited availability of equipment, which hampers the entire research workflow. To overcome these issues, we seek to acquire cutting-edge chiral separations technology to replace a recently decommissioned instrument. With the enhanced analytical capabilities supported by this proposal, we anticipate that we will be able to decrease the time needed to develop enabling catalytic enantioselective reactions for high-energy materials research. Moreover, access to such instrumentation will enhance the educational experience of graduate student and postdoctoral trainees, consistent with our goal of educating the next generation of synthetic chemists for careers in academic, industrial, and national research laboratories.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 03, 2023
- Source ID
- N000142312258
Entities
People
- Keary M Engle
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Scripps Research
- United States Navy