Filed under: Chemistry Professors, Group News, Science, Students | Tags: carbon dioxide, news, publications, science, students
Fran, Nduka (PhD 2008-2013) and Jenna (PhD 2011-2015) wrote a short review article on copolymerization of carbon dioxide with epoxides late last year and early this year. It has been accepted for publication in a special issue of Dalton Transactions on the topic of “Advances in Metal-Catalysed Polymerisation and Related Transformations”. Although Aluminum catalysts are generally less-reactive than some state of the art catalysts for such reactions, there is significant scope to develop new systems based on this cheap metal. For example, Aluminum can catalyse many different types of polymerization reactions and so one could imagine preparing terpolymers (polymers made up of 3 different sub-units/monomers) or even more complex materials.
Here is a link to the article: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2013/dt/c3dt00049d
Graphical Abstract for Perspective on Al catalysts for carbon dioxide-epoxide copolymerizations
Khaled Omari, a recent graduate of the group (PhD, Dr. Kerton), will soon be moving to Nova Scotia to begin Postdoctoral Research at Cape Breton University in collaboration with B.W.BioEnergy Inc. Congratulations on your new position and we hope you enjoy life in Sydney and your new research endeavours are as successful as those during your PhD.
Congratulations to Khaled, who defended his PhD thesis yesterday.
Thank you to all involved in the defence: the examiners, the chair, and those who work in the School of Graduate Studies especially Ruby and Elizabeth.
Photo after Khaled’s defence: Dr. Schlaf (University of Guelph) and Dr. Kerton attended via webcamera. Dr. Solberg was Chair. Dr. Helleur and Dr. Hawboldt (not in photo) were the internal examiners.
Now, Khaled is busy making the necessary corrections to his thesis so that it can be submitted for binding.
Khaled’s PhD research has been published in the three articles listed here. Links are provided below.
K. W. Omari, L. Dodot and F. M. Kerton*, “A Simple One-Pot Dehydration Process to Convert N-acetyl-D-glucosamine into a Nitrogen-Containing Compound, 3-acetamido-5-acetylfuran”, ChemSusChem, 2012, 5, 1767-72, cssc.201200113
M. W. Drover, K. W. Omari, J. N. Murphy and F. M. Kerton*, “Formation of a renewable amide via direct conversion of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine”, RSC Adv., 2012, 2, 4642-4643, DOI:10.1039/C2RA20578E
K. W. Omari, J. E. Besaw and F. M. Kerton*, “Hydrolysis of Chitosan Into Levulinic Acid and 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural In Water Under Microwave Irradiation”, Green Chemistry, 2012, 14, 1480-1487, DOI:10.1039/C2GC35048C. One of the top ten most-accessed articles in Green Chem. in April 2012.
Filed under: Group News, Students | Tags: carbon dioxide, chemistry, green, MSc, PhD, sustainable
Dr. Kozak and Dr. Kerton plan to recruit several new graduate students to being in Fall 2013. (Dr. Kozak also has funding for students to begin in Jan or May 2013).
Projects include:
1. Copolymerization and related transformations of carbon dioxide using chromium (Kozak group) and aluminum (Kerton group) complexes.
2. Catalytic transformations using earth abundant metals, e.g. iron (Kozak group)
3. Catalytic transformations of a renewable amide (Kerton group)
If you are interesting in joining our research team, please contact us for more information. All applications must be submitted via the School of Graduate Studies. Stipends for students in the PhD program are $20,000 per year and in the MSc program, $18,000 per year.
Students in our group gain (1) interdisciplinary training inorganic/organic/analytical in a recently refurbished laboratory; (2) hands on experience using a range of instruments; (3) opportunities to travel and to collaborate.
Most MSc students have published 1 or 2 papers and PhD students 3-5 papers during their studies. See publication lists for more detail.
Currently, we have no funding for postdoctoral fellows BUT researchers are encouraged to apply for Government of Canada Fellowships etc. see details on bottom half of this page.
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: CO2 fixation, Copolymerization, polycarbonates
Congratulations to graduate student Rebecca Dean on her recent paper on chromium-catalyzed copolymerization of CO2 and cyclohexene oxide, which will shortly appear in the journal Inorganic Chemistry.
Table of Contents Graphic from the paper
Filed under: Chemistry Professors, Conferences, Group News, Group Photos, Science, Students | Tags: catalysis, conferences, poster
Chris presents his poster in Toulouse
Chris, Fran and Justin attended this international conference during the past week. We saw lots of great talks and presented our posters alongside many other delegates……we also ate far too much good food and drank too much wine thanks to the generous hospitality of our hosts. Next time (July 2014) the conference is being held in Ottawa, Canada. The website for the next ISHC is found here.
Fran presents her poster in Toulouse
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: Amine-bis(phenolate) Ligands, Capricious Coordination Chemistry of Cobalt Complexes, Cobalt Chemistry, Crystal Structures, Kobold
A paper describing the collective work of three undergraduates in the Green Chemistry and Catalysis Group has been accepted for publication in the journal Polyhedron. The work was done by Lisa Saunders (who is headed for grad school at Queen’s U.) during a USRA project, Michelle Pratt during a MUCEP work term (who is starting at MUN medical school this September) and Sarah Hann, who was employed as a summer research assistant in the group and is currently a med. student at MUN.
The paper is entitled: “Structural Variations in the Coordination Chemistry of Amine-bis(phenolate) Cobalt(II/III) Complexes” and should appear on-line shortly. Thanks to Lisa, Michelle and Sarah for their hard work on these capricious cobalt complexes, and to Andreas Decken (UNB Crystallography Service) and Louise Dawe (C-CART XRD lab) for their expertise. 
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: calendar, CIC, CSC, Inorganic Chemistry, prize, student
Thank you and congratulations to Marcus Drover (Mr. April) for having his entry selected for inclusion in the first calendar prepared by the inorganic division of the CSC. It is available for download in pdf format, if you click HERE! We hope that future students will submit entries and also be selected for inclusion – what a great artistic way to tell the world about your chemistry research!
Filed under: Conferences, Group News, Group Photos, Science, Students | Tags: Canadian Chemistry, chemistry, CSC, green chemistry, poster
Chris, Fran, Khaled and Nduka have been enjoying the science and Albertan hospitality at the CSC
Chris and Fran spoke in the metal-mediated polymerization symposium organized by Mike Shaver and Paul Hayes. Nduka presented his poster in the same symposium on Sunday evening and Khaled presented his poster in the Industrial division on Monday night.
Thanks to all the organizers and volunteers for a fantastic meeting.
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: caprolactone, chemistry, DAAD RISE, kinetics, lithium complexes, MALDI-TOF, ROP
A second paper by group members has been accepted today for publication. This time in Dalton Transactions.
The paper is called: Ring-opening polymerization of ε-caprolactone by lithium piperazinyl-aminephenolate complexes: Synthesis, characterization and kinetic studies
Dalton Trans., DOI:10.1039/C2DT30276D
Nduka is a PhD candidate in our group and Christian was a visiting student from Germany who joined our group last summer on a DAAD RISE scholarship. They worked really hard to get all the kinetic data and the MALDI-TOF spectra presented in this paper. Thanks also to Louise for the two structures included.
Green Chemistry @ MUN 