The Harman Lab

UVA Department of Chemistry

Inorganic Chemistry

Nucleophilic Additions to Tungsten-Allyl Complexes

Dr. Justin Weatherford-Pratt, Dr. W. Dean Harman

Project Summary

The Harman lab focuses on performing dearomatization reactions to form new chemical compounds from aromatic reactants. This is accomplished by applying organic synthesis techniques to inorganic complexes. I produced two novel modified tungsten-anisole complexes, credited in Science Advances.

Skills

Scientific research: Literature review, data mining, wet-lab technique, collaboration

Analytical techniques

NMR spectroscopy (H-NMR, P-NMR, 2D-NMR)
X-ray Diffraction (XRD) single-crystal preparation
Software: ChemDraw, MestreNova

Organic synthesis with publication

Crystal structure of 3-methylanisole tungsten-allyl complex.

My work with the Harman lab was a combination of literature review and wet-lab procedure. I synthesized two novel complexes that are published in Science Advances.

I created two aryl-substituted enonium complexes by first doubly protonating a dihapto-coordianted tungsten anisole complex, followed by an addition reaction with an aromatic nucleophile. The aromatic nucleophiles 1,5-dihydoxynapthalene and 3-methyl anisole, produced complexes 10D and 18D in the article, respectively. I characterized these complexes using NMR (²H and ¹³C) and XRD (single-crystal).

Data analysis and literature review

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, my first two semesters with the Harman lab were entirely virtual. I conducted literature review of the past publications from the Harman lab to build a database of all synthesized complexes. Using ChemDraw, I extracted all osmium-containing complexes in publications from the past 30 years.

Semester Report