News

The Prokopchuk Lab will receive a three-year US Department of Energy research grant to continue its research into “supercharged” organometallic redox agents! This program will build on results published in 2022 and 2024. Congrats to Ageliki and Viani for laying the groundwork in this exciting area of chemistry!!

https://www.energy.gov/articles/us-department-energy-announces-31-million-build-research-capacity-academic-institutions

Congratulations to David for receiving the inaugural SASN Teaching Assistant Award!! This campus-wide competition recognizes David’s excellence as a TA for the Organic Chemistry and Advanced Inorganic Chemisty courses. Read more here.

Congratulations to Lirong for receiving the 2024 Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship!!! The DF will enable her to fully focus on completing her research projects and thesis in the 2024-2025 academic year.

The Prokopchuk group has its first newly minted PhD!! Bhumika successfully defended her thesis titled “Controlling the Movement of Protons and Electrons with Amine-Functionalized Cp^N3 Ligands Coordinated to Iron.” Congratulations!!!

In a tour de force of experimental and mechanistic work, we describe the multisite chemical noninniocence of the Cp^N3 ligand with hydride donors. Different hydride reagents yield different products, and the reaction mechanisms were thoroughly investigated by DFT and experimental methods. Congrats Andy and Hagen! Read more here.

We have set new standard in organometallic redox chemistry by isolating and characterizing one of the strongest reducing agents in existence: a Mn(-I) dianion stabilized by borate-bridged dicarbene and three CO ligands. This “super spicy” reagent exhibits beautiful redox waves via cyclic voltammetry and can smoothly transfer electrons to organic, inorganic, and organometallic substrates. Congrats Ageliki! Read more here.

This Summer, the Prokopchuk will host three undergraduate student researchers. Allison (left) and Amado (middle) join us from Amherst College, funded by the Meikljohn Fellowship program. Shenelle (right) is from Rutgers-Newark and funded by the GS-LSAMP fellowship program. Welcome! 

David recently published a Polyhedron article describing the synthesis of three new FeCp*(dicarbene) complexes that are in three different spin states. Congratulations! Read more about it here as part of the New Investigators Collection.

Lirong recently discovered a nickel that complex facilitates reversible, electrochemically mediated aryl insertion into a metal-phosphine bond via Ni⁰ Ni^I, Ni^II, Ni^III, and Ni^IV intermediates. Her work was published in ChemComm and our artwork submission is now featured on the front cover! Check it out: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2024/cc/d3cc04687g

A collaborative project with the Grimme group unravels the mechanism of electrocatalytic H₂ production using Fe(Cp^N3) complexes. We find that two factors are critical for catalysis: Cp^N3 ligand protonation and inner-sphere solvent binding. For more details, please read here!