CAREER: Metal Ligand Cooperativity to Cleave C-H Bonds

Dr. Matthew Nava of the University of California, Los Angeles will develop new ways to transform the basic building blocks of chemicals into valuable products including medicines, agrochemicals, material precursors, and chemical fuels. Currently, many essential chemical reactions require the use of rare and expensive “noble” metals, which can be difficult to extract, and subject to supply chain disruptions when sourced from geopolitically sensitive regions. This project seeks to replace these critical metals with common, inexpensive and earth-abundant elements molecularly engineered to perform at the same high level as their noble metal counterparts. A key enabling feature of this work is the use of supporting ligands to compensate for deficiencies of base elements. By making chemical manufacturing cleaner, more affordable, and hardened against supply chain disruptions, this work would strengthen advanced manufacturing in the U.S., while also increasing our economic competitiveness and security. Beyond the laboratory, the project will provide unique training opportunities for undergraduate students, equipping them with the technical skills needed for the modern workforce and creating publicly available tutorials to make applied chemical synthesis available to everyone. The proposed research will investigate the role of metal-ligand cooperativity in bond activation processes through the development of modular synthetic platforms. Specifically, the project would focus on the synthesis of metal aminoxide and related scaffolds designed as metal-based analogues of organic 1,3-dipoles. These complexes will be used to interrogate the fundamental design parameters required to unlock the activation of strong C–H bonds using abundant main-group elements and first-row transition metals. Through detailed structure-function studies and physical characterization, the research will seek to elucidate the individual electronic contributions of the dipole components, which have been historically difficult to decouple. The project will evaluate the ability of these dipolar systems to enable reversible sp2 and sp3 C–H bond activation processes and subsequent functionalization under mild conditions. Ultimately, these molecular design concepts are expected to be broadly applicable to many elements across the periodic table and provide alternative and orthogonal routes to chemical processes that traditionally require precious metals. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2543785 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Matthew Nava | Institution: University of California-Los Angeles, LOS ANGELES, CA | Award Amount: $750,000 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2543785 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2543785.html