个人简介

2012-present Professor, University of Notre Dame 2002-2012 Associate Professor, University of Notre Dame 1996-2002 Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame 1994-1996 Postdoctoral Fellow, California Institute of Technology 1994 Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry, University of Washington 1988 B.S. in Chemistry, B.S. in Humanities and Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Award: 2011 Fellow of the American Chemical Society 2009 Edmund P. Joyce, CSC Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching 2008 Shilts/Leonard award for outstanding teaching in the College of Science 2003, 2006 John Kaneb Award for undergraduate teaching 2005 University of Notre Dame Presidential Award 2004 Thomas P. Madden Award for outstanding teaching in the first-year program 1998-2002 NSF Career Award 1998-2001 Dupont Young Professor Award 1996 Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation New Faculty Award

研究领域

Inorganic Chemistry/Organic Chemistry

Enhancing our understanding of the mechanisms of chemical reactions is critical to improving processes to interconvert efficiently between chemical and electrical energy or to make chemical products in an environmentally benign way. The Brown group is addressing this overarching problem through studies in two basic areas. The first area of research is in oxidation reactions. Traditionally, redox reactions mediated by metals involve changes in both oxidation state and bonding that directly involve those metal centers. We are exploring an alternative mode of redox reactivity, what we term "nonclassical" redox reactions, where bond-making or bond-breaking events occur at a metal center but oxidations or reductions occur not at the metal center but at redox-active ligands attached to the metal. These processes generate novel species with unusual electronic structure, which may be capable of unusual reactivity. Furthermore, separating the locus of electron transfer from that of changes in bonding mimics the heterogeneous catalysis involved in fuel cells, suggesting that nonclassical homogeneous reactions may lead to conceptual insights or practical advances in systems for interconverting electrical and chemical energy. A second area of research is in catalysis directed toward chemical synthesis. We are interested in elucidating general features of the electronic structure of catalysts that enhance or impede their efficiency. For example, recent studies have suggested that for a broad class of reactions that involve binding to two sites on a catalyst, the electronic similarity or dissimilarity of the sites can have a marked effect on the efficiency of catalysis. We then use these principles to design new catalysts for useful transformations. A recent target is catalyzing the use of the noxious pollutant NO2 to selectively make nitroorganics from hydrocarbons.

近期论文

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Ranis, L.G.; Werellapatha, K.; Pietrini, N.J.; Bunker, B.A.; Brown, S.N. "Metal and Ligand Effects on Bonding in Group 6 Complexes of Redox-Active Amidodiphenoxides." Inorg. Chem. 2014, 53 (19), 10203-10216. Shekar, S.; Brown, S.N. "Mixed amidophenolate-catecholates of molybdenum (VI)." Dalton T. 2014, 43 (9), 3601-3611. Cipressi, J.; Brown, S.N. "Octahedral to trigonal prismatic distortion driven by subjacent orbital pi antibonding interactions and modulated by ligand redox noninnocence." Chem. Commun. 2014, 50 (59), 7956-7959. Randolph, A.H.; Seewald, N.J.; Rickert, K.; Brown, S.N. "Tris(3,5-di-tert-butylcatecholato)molybdenum(VI): Lewis Acidity and Nonclassical Oxygen Atom Transfer Reactions." Inorg. Chem. 2013, 52 (21), 12587-12598. Wright, D.D.; Brown, S.N. "Nonclassical Oxygen Atom Transfer as a Synthetic Strategy: Preparation of an Oxorhenium(V) Complex of the Bis(3,5-di-tert-butyl-2-phenoxo)amide Ligand." Inorg. Chem. 2013, 52, 7381-7383. Shekar, S.; Brown, S.N. "Migrations of Alkyl and Aryl Groups from Silicon to Nitrogen in Silylated Aryloxyiminoquinones." Organometallics 2013, 32, 556-564.