Chemistry Alums Boyd and Pérez-Temprano Named to Talented 12

Dr. Mónica Pérez-Temprano, who worked as a postdoctoral researcher with U-M Chemistry Professor Melanie Sanford, was awarded a spot on the Talented 12 for her work trapping reactive intermediate species in cobalt-catalyzed chemical reactions at her independent laboratory at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia. Cobalt is an interesting metal to study because it can catalyze a variety of reactions and it is less expensive than other typical transition-metal catalysts (palladium, rhodium). Despite these advantages, chemists understand much less about how it works. A key breakthrough in Dr. Pérez-Temprano’s work was using acetonitrile (a solvent molecule) to stabilize and isolate a highly reactive and previously-elusive cobalt intermediate in an annulation reaction. Trapping these types of intermediates provides crucial information about the elementary steps of cobalt-catalyzed reactions that modify C–H bonds. This knowledge allows Dr. Pérez-Temprano and her group to both improve the efficiency of existing cobalt-catalyzed reactions and to discover new reactions.

Dr. Pérez-Temprano is enthusiastic about the future of this work, which she believes will help chemists design new catalysts to push the boundaries of what cobalt can do. “Many times, the reactions that we run in the lab don’t work, but that doesn’t mean that they are impossible. Sometimes the problem is that a specific and maybe non-intuitive elementary step is not efficient,” she explains.

Dr. Darryl Boyd, who worked as an undergraduate with U-M Chemistry Professor Vince Pecoraro, was named to the Talent 12 for his work at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory making chalcogenide-based (sulfur, selenium) polymers for night vision goggles and other infrared optics. He adapted a newly-developed technique that allowed him to make novel polymers with ideal optical and physical properties. Typically, polymers are good materials for optics. However, most polymers are not transparent to infrared light because they are made up of carbon and hydrogen atoms. Dr. Boyd approached this problem by applying a recently-developed technique, called inverse vulcanization, to make polymers that contain primarily sulfur and selenium atoms rather than carbon and hydrogen. It is this key mixture of atoms that makes Dr. Boyd’s polymers transparent – he even demonstrated that an image of a human subject could be captured through a disk of his polymer using a camera that “sees” infrared light.

 Dr. Boyd’s work could inspire development of a new class of materials based on chalcogen atoms. He is eager to continue making discoveries in this field. “There is so much unexplored about chalcogen polymers,” he says. “People are exploring uses for them in a broad range of applications including optics, rechargeable battery technology and solar cell research. All of this opportunity is very exciting to me.”