Hosted by: Gordie Miller
Title: “Catalysis with First-Row Transition Metal Complexes”
ABSTRACT
Our group has focused on dehydrogenation reactions of alcohols to give ketones and esters using complexes of Earth-abundant first row metal complexes of iron, cobalt, and nickel. Amines can also be dehydrogenated. Details of the mechanism have been elucidated, including isolation of catalytic intermediates. Applications to the Guerbet upgrading of ethanol to 1-butanol will be presented. Recent work with fused bisoxazoline (FOX) ligands has revealed catalysts for alcohol dehydration rather than dehydrogenation.
BIOGRAPHY
William D. Jones was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1953, and was inspired to work in inorganic chemistry as an undergraduate researcher with Mark S. Wrighton at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS, 1975). He obtained a Ph.D. degree in chemistry at California Institute of Technology (1979), working with Robert G. Bergman. He moved to the University of Wisconsin as an NSF postdoctoral fellow with Chuck Casey, and in 1980 accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1984 and Professor in 1987, and is now the Charles F. Houghton Professor of Chemistry. Professor Jones has received several awards, including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (1984), a Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award (1985), a Royal Society Guest Research Fellowship (1988), a Fulbright-Hays Scholar (1988), a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (1988), the ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry (2003), an ACS Cope Scholar Award (2009), the Royal Society of Chemistry Organometallic Chemistry Award (2017), and a Humboldt Research Award (2018). He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009), and a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (2010). Professor Jones was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2022. He also has served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society from 2003-2020. Professor Jones' research interests include organometallic research in strong C-X bond cleavage, catalysis, model studies, mechanisms, kinetics, thermodynamics, and synthetic applications.
Selected Publications:
“On the Nature of Carbon-Hydrogen Bond Activation at Rhodium and Related Reactions,” William D. Jones, Inorg. Chem.2005, 44, 4475-4484. (an overview of C-H and C-S activation chemistry from my lab)
“Isotope Effects in C-H Bond Activation Reactions by Transition Metals,” William D. Jones, Acc. Chem. Res. 2003, 36, 140-146.
“Activation of C-F Bonds using Cp*2ZrH2: A Diversity of Mechanisms,” William D. Jones, J. Chem. Soc., Dalton Trans. 2003, 3991-3995. (an overview of C-F activation from my lab)
“Experimental and Theoretical Examination of C–CN Bond Activation of Benzonitrile using Zerovalent Nickel,” Tülay A. Ateşin, Ting Li, Sébastien Lachaize, Juventino J. García, and William D. Jones, Organometallics2008, 27, 3811-3817.
“Rhodium-Carbon Bond Energies in Tp'Rh(CNneopentyl)(CH2X)H: Quantifying Stabilization Effects in M-C Bonds,” Yunzhe Jiao, Meagan E. Evans, James Morris, William W. Brennessel, and William D. Jones. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 6994–7004.
“Highly Selective Formation of n-Butanol from Ethanol through the Guerbet Process: A Tandem Catalytic Approach,” Sumit Chakraborty, Paige E. Piszel, Cassandra E. Hayes, R. Tom Baker, and William D. Jones, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, 137, 14264-14267.
“Iron-Based Dehydration Catalyst for Selective Formation of Styrene,” Olaf Nachtigall, Andrew I. VanderWeide, William W. Brennessel, and William D. Jones, ACS Catal. 2021, 11, 10885-10891.
