CAREER: CAS: An Electrochemical Approach for Catalytic Dehydration

With the support of the Chemical Catalysis Program in the Division of Chemistry, Eric Nacsa of the Pennsylvania State University is studying the development of new chemical catalysts powered by electrical energy to promote dehydration reactions. The discovery and manufacture of medicines, textiles, plastics, food products, and perfumes depend heavily on chemical dehydrations. These processes combine simpler precursors to make useful products by removing a molecule of water, but they overwhelmingly generate a significant amount of unnecessary and potentially wasteful chemical byproduct to achieve this seemingly simple outcome. Electrical energy is being leveraged to power catalysts that achieve these dehydration reactions in a conceptually new manner that mitigates chemical byproduct formation. Dr. Nacsa is also studying a new teaching method that aims to improve learning outcomes and equity in the context of undergraduate organic chemistry. This course is a prerequisite for physicians, dentists, veterinarians, and a range of engineers, but it often presents a stumbling block to these careers that is seen as intimidating and inequitable. These issues are being addressed through the development of new types of assessments as alternatives to exam-intensive evaluation approaches. Efficient dehydration catalysts have traditionally been challenging to develop because of countervailing electronic demands throughout catalytic cycles. This challenge is being addressed by the Nacsa research team by using electrochemistry to modulate the oxidation state of sulfur-based organocatalysts. The catalysts are expected to enable nucleophilic substitutions of acids to afford esters and amides, and nucleophilic additions of alcohols to afford ethers, alkyl halides, and amines using electrochemistry to promote catalyst activation and turnover. By avoiding the generation of stoichiometric byproducts usually associated with dehydration reactions, the environmental footprint impact of these types of reactions is expected to be reduced, and the derivatization process is expected to be streamlined in support of a broad array of both discovery and process chemistries. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.