Viktor Zhdankin
University of Minnesota-Duluth, MN·Chemistry
Building new molecules, such as drugs or crop chemicals, often relies on toxic or expensive metal catalysts. Iodine offers an alternative: in its hypervalent form, where it forms more bonds than usual, iodine can behave much like a transition metal yet is non-toxic and works under mild conditions.
- Fields
Chemistry
- Topics
hypervalent iodine
organoiodine chemistry
organic synthesis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Develop pseudocyclic arylbenziodoxaboroles, iodine–boron compounds, as benzyne precursors and as efficient electrophilic arylating reagents that work under neutral, aqueous conditions.
- Explore 4-iodonium substituted arylboronic acids as precursors of para-benzyne, a highly reactive ring intermediate useful for building complex molecules.
- Study the synthesis and reactivity of stabilized iodonium derivatives of porphyrins and dipyrromethenes, ring-shaped pigment-like molecules, to create new iodine-based reagents.
- Search for new types of polyvalent iodine compounds stabilized by internal halogen bonding, a weak attraction between iodine and nearby atoms within the same molecule.
More about the research
This project explores how to make new hypervalent iodine compounds and how to use them in cleaner, metal-free chemical reactions, working at the boundary between organic and inorganic chemistry.
Why it matters
Methods that replace metal catalysts with non-toxic, recyclable iodine reagents working in water could make chemical synthesis cleaner and safer. This could benefit the pharmaceutical, chemical and agricultural industries, and academic chemists, wherever organic molecules must be built efficiently with less environmental harm.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Song Lin
Cornell University, NY·Chemistry
Develop hypervalent iodine reagents carrying labile ligands that selectively couple two unactivated aliphatic amines to form N–N bonds.
Bruce Gibb
Tulane University of Louisiana, LA·Chemistry
Develop a mild catalytic process for adding iodine to aromatic rings in water that works across a broad range of starting molecules, using supramolecular hosts and the hydrophobic effect.
Michel Gagne
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Chemistry
Develop site-selective and functional group-directed C-H functionalization reactions, which convert specific carbon-hydrogen bonds into new groups, using light-activated organic photoredox catalysts.
The school
University of Minnesota-Duluth: 1 labs on PI Pages, $30M a year on research.
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