Chemistry Department U. S. Naval Academy 572 Holloway Rd. Current research effort is directed towards the design and synthesis of materials capable of catalyzing low temperature reactions of O2.
Molecular oxygen is a thermodynamically powerful yet kinetically slow oxidant.
Many of these use iron porphyrins at their active sites. For this reason, porphyrins and their analogs have real potential as oxygen activation catalysts. One family of porphyrin analogs, tetraazaporphyrins, are particularly promising due to their oxidative stability and positively shifted redox couples. This research project involves the synthesis of new metallotetraazaporphyrins and the study of these materials as oxygen activation catalysts. It has been proven that tetraazaporphyrins will catalyze oxygen atom transfer reactions.