Date of Award

Summer 1995

Document Type

Thesis - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Chemistry

First Advisor

Yi, Chae Sung

Second Advisor

Haworth, Daniel T.

Third Advisor

Donaldson, William A.

Abstract

Carbon dioxide has high potential as an alternate energy source because it constitutes an abundant source of carbon in nature. In recent years, important progress on the activation of carbon dioxide has been made, but many of the reaction mechanisms are not fully understood. Our research goal is to understand the fundamental reactions of transition metal complexes with carbon dioxide and to probe the reaction mechanisms involved with the hope of developing better catalysts for the activation of carbon dioxide. Linear dimerization of terminal acetylenes by transition metal complexes is an attractive method for the synthesis of natural products as well as building blocks for further structural elaboration. Only a few transition metal based catalyst systems currently are known to catalyze the dimerization of terminal alkynes, often with low regio- and stereoselectivity. Our research purpose is to study the scope and the reaction mechanisms, and to develop better catalysts with high regio- and . stereoselectivity for the dimerization of terminal acetylenes.

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