Senior Investigators: Prof. Karen Goldberg (U. Wash.), Prof. Mike Heinekey (U. Wash.), Prof. William Jones (U. Rochester), Prof. Melanie Sanford (U. Mich.), Prof. Wes Borden (U. North Texas).

The ability to use alkanes directly as a feedstock for the chemical production of alcohols and other organics would significantly impact the chemical industry.  Some thirty years after Shilov’s initial discovery of platinum-catalyzed alkane oxidation, platinum-based systems continue to represent some of the most promising leads for the direct conversion of alkanes to alcohols on industrially viable scales.  Other late transition metals such as iridium and rhodium are also known to activate alkanes via a two-electron couple and could in principle perform similar Shilov-type chemisty, perhaps even more successfully than platinum. Surprisingly, other metals have not been extensively explored for this purpose.  Using the large knowledge base gained from detailed mechanistic studies on the well-defined platinum systems, related electrophilic catalysts of other metals are under investigation. Efforts are focused on developing and applying fundamental mechanistic understanding of C-H bond activation to the development of new catalytic systems for alkane oxidation.

Natural gas reserves rival those of petroleum. Therefore, methane, the main component of natural gas, has the potential of serving as a valuable feedstock and of being a complementary source of energy to petroleum well into the 21st century. To this end, the discovery of direct and thus more economical methods for methane oxidation technology represents the greatest potential in this field.

Published Papers:

Ahuja, R.; Kundu, S.; Goldman, A. S.; Brookhart, M.; Vicente, B. C.; Scott, S. L. “Catalytic Ring Expansion, Contraction, and Metathesis-Polymerization of Cycloalkanes” ChemComm., 2008, 253-255.
(DOI: 10.1039/b712197k)

Meredith, J. M.; Goldberg, K. I.; Kaminsky, W.; Heinekey, D. M. “Dinuclear Iridium Complexes Containing Cp* and Carbonyl Ligands: Synthesis, Structure and Reactivity” Organometallics, 2009, 28, 3546-3551.
(DOI: 10.1021/om900186j)

Bernskoetter, W. H.; Hanson, S. K.; Buzak, S. K.; Davis, Z.; White, P. S.; Swartz, R.; Goldberg, K. I.; Brookhart, M. “Investigations of Iridium Mediated Reversible C-H Bond Cleavage: Characterization of a 16-Electron Iridium(III) Methyl Hydride Complex”, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2009, 28, 3546-3551.
(DOI: 10.1021/ja901706b)