Chemical reactions are happening all around us all the time—obvious when you think about it, but how many of us do it when we start a car, boil an egg, or fertilize our lawn?
        Chemical catalysis expert Richard Kong has been thinking about chemical reactions. In his work as a “professional tuner,” as he puts it, he is not only interested in responses that arise on their own, but also in identifying new responses.
        As a Klarman Fellow in Chemistry and Chemical Biology at the College of Arts and Sciences, Kong works to develop catalysts that drive chemical reactions to desired outcomes, creating safe and even value-added products, including those that can have a positive impact on person. health. Wednesday.
        “A significant amount of chemical reactions take place unaided,” Kong said, referring to the release of carbon dioxide when cars burn fossil fuels. “But more complex and complex chemical reactions don’t happen automatically. This is where chemical catalysis comes into play.”
        Kong and his colleagues developed catalysts to direct the reactions they wanted to happen. For example, carbon dioxide can be converted to formic acid, methanol, or formaldehyde by choosing the right catalyst and experimenting with reaction conditions.
        According to Kyle Lancaster, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (A&S) and Kong’s moderator, Kong’s approach fits well with the “discovery-driven” approach of Lancaster’s lab. “Richard had the idea of ​​using tin to improve his chemistry, which was never in my script,” Lancaster said. “He has a catalyst that can selectively convert carbon dioxide, which is talked about a lot in the press, into something more valuable.”
       Kong and his collaborators recently discovered a system that, under certain conditions, can convert carbon dioxide into formic acid.
        “While we are not yet state of the art in responsiveness, our system is highly customizable,” Kong said. “In this way, we can begin to understand more deeply why some catalysts work faster than others, why some catalysts are inherently better. We can tweak the parameters of the catalysts and try to understand what makes these things work faster, because the faster they work, the better they work, the faster you can create molecules.”
       As a Klarman Fellow, Kong is also working to remove nitrates, a common fertilizer that seeps toxicly into waterways, from the environment and turn them into more harmless substances, he said.
        Kong experimented with using metals found in the earth, such as aluminum and tin, as catalysts. The metals are cheap, non-toxic and abundant in the earth’s crust, so using them won’t pose sustainability issues, he said.
        “We are also working on how to make catalysts where two metals interact with each other,” Kong said. “By using two metals in one framework, what reactions and interesting chemical processes can we get from bimetallic systems?”
       Forests are the chemical environment that holds these metals – they are critical to unlocking the potential of these metals to do their job, just like you need the right clothes for the right weather, Kong said.
        For the past 70 years, the standard has been to use a single metal center to achieve chemical transitions, but in the last decade or so, chemists in the field have begun to investigate the union of two metals, either chemically or in close proximity. First, says Kong, “It gives you more degrees of freedom.”
        These bimetallic catalysts give chemists the ability to combine metal catalysts based on their strengths and weaknesses, Kong says. For example, a metal center that bonds poorly to substrates but breaks bonds well may work with another metal center that breaks bonds poorly but bonds well to substrates. The presence of the second metal also affects the properties of the first metal.
       ”You can start to get what we call a synergistic effect between the two metal centers,” Kong said. “The field of bimetallic catalysis is already starting to show some really unique and wonderful reactivity.”
        Kong said there are still many ambiguities about how metals bond to each other in molecular compounds. He was as excited by the beauty of the chemistry itself as he was by the results. Kong was brought to Lancaster Laboratories for their expertise in X-ray spectroscopy.
        “It’s a symbiosis,” Lancaster said. “X-ray spectroscopy helped Richard understand what was going on behind the scenes and what makes tin particularly reactive and capable of this chemical reaction. We benefited from his extensive knowledge of major group chemistry, which opened the door for the group to a new area.”
       It all comes down to basic chemistry and research, says Kong, and this approach is made possible by an Open Klarman scholarship.
        “On a typical day, I can run reactions in the lab or sit at a computer simulating molecules,” he said. “We’re trying to get as complete a picture of chemical activity as possible.”