Dasan Thamattoor
Colby College, ME·Chemistry
Some of the most consequential species in chemistry exist for only a flicker of time. Reactive intermediates such as carbenes, which hold a carbon atom with two bonds instead of four, appear and vanish within a reaction yet determine where the atoms end up.
- Fields
Chemistry
- Topics
reactive intermediates
carbenes
cyclopropylidene
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Generate singlet vinylcarbenes from cyclopropanated phenanthrene precursors and determine their structure and reactivity, given their proposed role in cyclopropene isomerizations and related synthetic transformations.
- Measure the kinetics and structure of cyclopropylidene, the smallest carbocyclic carbene, and its derivatives using time-resolved laser flash photolysis, matrix isolation spectroscopy and computational chemistry.
- Develop cyclobutanated phenanthrenes as photochemical sources of ketenes and allenes, characterizing the released intermediates by steady-state photolysis, EPR spectroscopy and electronic structure calculations.
More about the research
Their fleeting nature makes them hard to measure, so basic facts about their structure and how fast they react are often missing. This work generates such species cleanly from stable, easily handled starting materials built around phenanthrene, a three-ring aromatic hydrocarbon that acts as a launching pad and leaves behind a convenient byproduct.
Why it matters
Chemists routinely rely on reactions that pass through carbenes, ketenes and allenes without firm numbers for how these intermediates are shaped or how quickly they react. Pinning down the structures and kinetics, especially for vinylcarbenes in cyclopropene isomerizations and for the small ring carbene cyclopropylidene, could make such transformations more predictable to design and control in synthesis.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Matthew Platz
University of Hawaii at Manoa, HI·Chemistry
Synthesize diazirines, diazo compounds and oxadiazolines as light-activated sources of carbenes, the reactive two-bonded carbon intermediates, for photochemical studies.
Jay Amicangelo
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Chemistry
Record infrared spectra of hydrogenated radicals formed from hydrogen atoms and monosubstituted benzenes (X = OCH3, CH3, Cl, CN), trapped in 15 K argon matrices using a microwave discharge hydrogen source.
Ming Chen
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Chemistry·Early-career
Develop asymmetric transformations of 1,1-bisborylalkanes bearing two chemically distinct boron groups on one carbon, so that each group can be activated separately to attach fragments in a chosen order.
The school
Colby College: 2 labs on PI Pages, $5M a year on research.
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