Inorganic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Liviu Mirica, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
copyright Liviu Mirica
About the Seminar
“A radical approach: Paramagnetic Nickel species in organometallic catalysis and electrocatalysis”
Paramagnetic Ni complexes have been proposed to play an important role in several organometallic reactions, as well as small molecule activation processes. In this context, a series of uncommon organometallic Ni(III) complexes relevant to cross-coupling reactions have been isolated and their catalytic reactivity was studied in detail. More recently, unique mononuclear Ni(I) complexes have been developed and their reactivity was probed for the first time. Finally, the intermediacy of such paramagnetic Ni species in two examples of photocatalytic C-O cross-coupling and an electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction will be discussed.
About the Speaker
Prof. Liviu Mirica is the William H. and Janet G. Lycan Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Caltech in 1999, and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University in 2005, working in the lab of Prof. T. Daniel P. Stack. After an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley with Prof. Judith P. Klinman, in 2008 he started his independent career at Washington University in St. Louis and in 2019 he moved to the University of Illinois. Prof. Mirica has made contributions to inorganic and organometallic chemistry, such as the design of flexible multidentate ligands that can stabilize transition metal ions such as Pd and Ni in uncommon oxidation states. He has also shown that these species are key intermediates in cross-coupling reactions and biomimetic oxidative and electrocatalytic transformations. Other contributions include the development of novel therapeutic and diagnostic agents for Alzheimer’s disease, including Cu-64 positron emission tomography (PET) imaging agents for the neurotoxic beta-amyloid peptide oligomers.