Publications

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The United States produces only about 1/3 of the more than 20 million barrels of petroleum that it consumes daily. Oil imports into the country are roughly equivalent to the amount consumed in the transportation sector. Hence the nation in general, and the transportation sector in particular, is vulnerable to supply disruptions and price shocks. The situation is anticipated to worsen as the competition for limited global supplies increases and oil-rich nations become increasingly willing to manipulate the markets for this resource as a means to achieve political ends. The goal of this project was the development and improvement of technologies and the knowledge base necessary to produce and qualify a universal fuel from diverse feedstocks readily available in North America and elsewhere (e.g. petroleum, natural gas, coal, biomass) as a prudent and positive step towards mitigating this vulnerability. Three major focus areas, feedstock transformation, fuel formulation, and fuel characterization, were identified and each was addressed. The specific activities summarized herein were identified in consultation with industry to set the stage for collaboration. Two activities were undertaken in the area of feedstock transformation. The first activity focused on understanding the chemistry and operation of autothermal reforming, with an emphasis on understanding, and therefore preventing, soot formation. The second activity was focused on improving the economics of oxygen production, particularly for smaller operations, by integrating membrane separations with pressure swing adsorption. In the fuel formulation area, the chemistry of converting small molecules readily produced from syngas directly to fuels was examined. Consistent with the advice from industry, this activity avoided working on improving known approaches, giving it an exploratory flavor. Finally, the fuel characterization task focused on providing a direct and quantifiable comparison of diesel fuel and JP-8.

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Control of nanoparticle size is crucial to the development of nanotechnology. At this point in time, no general, rational synthetic strategy for controlling nanocrystal diameters and producing narrow diameter distributions has emerged. This is a reflection of a poor understanding of the mechanisms for nanocrystal growth. Based on previous studies of bismuth and gold nanoparticle growth, this work clearly establishes two new synthetic approaches to controlled growth of colloidal Pt nanocrystals, both based on aggregative-growth mechanisms, which afford narrow size distributions and size control over a wide and relevant size regime. The first new method is a phase transfer process, where growth is controlled by varying ligand stabilizer concentrations. The second method involves rapid reduction of a molecular platinum precursor in the presence of a polymer stabilizer. At present the size control is empirical, and incompletely understood and incompletely developed. However, the new synthetic pathways are amenable to kinetic study and analysis, establishing that a quantitative, rational control of sizes and size distributions can be achieved.

This report summarizes our findings during the study of a novel system that yields multi-colored materials as products. This system is quite unusual as it leads to multi-chromic behavior in single crystals, where one would expect that only a single color would exist. We have speculated that these novel solids might play a role in materials applications such as non-linear optics, liquid crystal displays, piezoelectric devices, and other similar applications. The system examined consisted of a main-group alkyl compound (a p block element such as gallium or aluminum) complexed with various organic di-imines. The di-imines had substituents of two types--either alkyl or aromatic groups attached to the nitrogen atoms. We observed that single crystals, characterized by X-ray crystallography, were obtained in most cases. Our research during January-July, 2006, was geared towards understanding the factors leading to the multi-chromic nature of the complexes. The main possibilities put forth initially considered (a) the chiral nature of the main group metal, (b) possible reduction of the metal to a lower-valent, radical state, (c) the nature of the ligand(s) attached to the main group metal, and (d) possible degradation products of the ligand leading to highly-colored products. The work carried out indicates that the most likely explanation considered involves degradation of the aromatic ligands (a combination of (c) and (d)), as the experiments performed can clearly rule out (a) and (b).

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This report summarizes our findings during the study of a novel homogeneous epoxidation catalyst system that uses molecular oxygen as the oxidant, a ''Holy Grail'' in catalysis. While olefins (alkenes) that do not contain allylic hydrogens can be epoxidized directly using heterogeneous catalysts, most olefins cannot, and so a general, atom-efficient route is desired. While most of the work performed on this LDRD has been on pincer complexes of late transition metals, we also scouted out metal/ligand combinations that were significantly different, and unfortunately, less successful. Most of the work reported here deals with phosphorus-ligated Pd hydrides [(PCP)Pd-H]. We have demonstrated that molecular oxygen gas can insert into the Pd-H bond, giving a structurally characterized Pd-OOH species. This species reacts with oxygen acceptors such as olefins to donate an oxygen atom, although in various levels of selectivity, and to generate a [(PCP)Pd-OH] molecule. We discovered that the active [(PCP)Pd-H] active catalyst can be regenerated by addition of either CO or hydrogen. The demonstration of each step of the catalytic cycle is quite significant. Extensions to the pincer-Pd chemistry by attaching a fluorinated tail to the pincer designed to be used in solvents with higher oxygen solubilities are also presented.

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The overall purpose of this LDRD is multifold. First, we are interested in preparing new homogeneous catalysts that can be used in the oligomerization of ethylene and in understanding commercially important systems better. Second, we are interested in attempting to support these new homogeneous catalysts in the pores of nano- or mesoporous materials in order to force new and unusual distributions of a-olefins to be formed during the oligomerization. Thus the overall purpose is to try to prepare new catalytic species and to possibly control the active site architecture in order to yield certain desired products during a catalytic reaction, much like nature does with enzymes. In order to rationally synthesize catalysts it is imperative to comprehend the function of the various components of the catalyst. In heterogeneous systems, it is of utmost importance to know how a support interacts with the active site of the catalyst. In fact, in the catalysis world this lack of fundamental understanding of the relationship between active site and support is the single largest reason catalysis is considered an 'empirical' or 'black box' science rather than a well-understood one. In this work we will be preparing novel ethylene oligomerization catalysts, which are normally P-O chelated homogeneous complexes, with new ligands that replace P with a stable carbene. We will also examine a commercially catalyst system and investigate the active site in it via X-ray crystallography. We will also attempt to support these materials inside the pores of nano- and mesoporous materials. Essentially, we will be tailoring the size and scale of the catalyst active site and its surrounding environment to match the size of the molecular product(s) we wish to make. The overall purpose of the study will be to prepare new homogeneous catalysts, and if successful in supporting them to examine the effects that steric constraints and pore structures can have on growing oligomer chains.