Dr. Kelly M. Hines, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, was recently featured as an "Emerging Investigator" by the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (JASMS).

Single-crystalline materials play a crucial role in the modern semiconductor electronics industry and fundamental science. The ability to grow large single crystals with high purity and low concentration of defects allows us to build new types of devices such as high-resolution semiconductor radiation detectors. Another important application of crystals is fundamental research, where crystal growth enables rapid screening of phase diagrams, structure determination and property characterization of new compounds.

Chemical modifications combined with mass spectrometry have been extensively used for identification and quantification of compounds of interest. Applications range from sample derivatization to the use of bioconjugation and chemical probes of protein structure. The Webb Lab uses solution and gaseous chemistries to facilitate the identification of compounds and their three-dimensional structures.

The Many-Body Expansion (MBE) of the energy of a chemical system is a powerful tool that encodes physical descriptors of cooperative effects in chemical systems. Depending on the definition of what a “body” is, the expansion can be applied to a wide variety of chemical ensembles.

Butyl radicals (n-, s-, i-, and tert-butyl) are formed from the pyrolysis of nitrite or azo- precursors. The radicals are doped into a beam of liquid helium droplets and probed with infrared action spectroscopy from 2700−3125 cm-1, allowing for a low temperature measurement of the CH stretching region. The presence of anharmonic resonance polyads in the 2800 − 3000 cm-1 region complicates its interpretation.

Oxiranes are a class of cyclic ethers formed in abundance during the low-temperature combustion of hydrocarbons and biofuels from the unimolecular decomposition of hydroperoxyalkyl radicals (Q̇OOH). For example, ethyloxirane, cis-2,3-dimethyloxirane, and trans-2,3-dimethyloxirane are produced as intermediates during the oxidation of n-butane.

Conventional cross-coupling reactions typically involve the union of a nucleophilic and electrophilic coupling partner. In contrast, reductive (or cross-electrophile) coupling has recently emerged as an alternative approach in which two electrophilic partners can be coupled together. However, achieving cross-selectivity is an ongoing challenge for it necessitates chemoselective activation of one electrophile over the other.

Nucleophilic substitution reactions are at the heart of synthetic organic chemistry. While conventional strategies for conducting nucleophilic substitution reactions have been heavily studied, we hereby report the development of the novel photochemical approach to the induction of nucleophilic substitution reactions. This strategy employs a light-activated leaving group based on the 9-aryl-9-fluorene system. 9- fluorenol undergoes efficient photolysis of the C–O bond due to the stability of the aromatic 4π cyclic fluorenyl cation in the excited state.

Dithiodiketopiperazines or “DKP’s” is common motif that appears in various natural products. These natural products have been shown to display anti-viral or anti-tumor properties. Within the past two decades, an increasing number of natural products have been isolated containing a DKP core. Although synthetic strategy towards this core has been around since the 1960’s, there is still much innovation withing the area of DKP natural product total synthesis.