Kinetics and Mechanisms of Rapid Reactions in Solution

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

This award in the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry program supports research by Professor Dale Margerum at Purdue University to study the rapid kinetics and reaction mechanisms of both nonmetal and metal containing oxidants. Mechanistic studies of the reactions of chlorine dioxide with hydroxide, oxone, metal reagents, nitrite ion and oxybromine species will be done. This research has recently discovered that nucleophiles can assist a thermodynamically unfavored electron transfer from chlorite to bromine dioxide to yield a chlorine dioxide complex that oxidizes hydroxide. The reactions of Br(III) and Br(IV) will also be studied because of their possible environmental importance as intermediates when bromide in drinking water is converted to bromate ion in disinfection treatments. Highly reactive Cu(III) and Ni(III) peptide complexes will also be studied. Peptide complexes of these metal ions form as reactive intermediates in some methods for site-specific DNA cleavage. These studies encompass a broad and fundamental area of inorganic solution chemistry and include many reactions of vital concern to environmental chemistry. The research involving chlorine dioxide is particularly relevant as this oxidant has recently been used to fumigate buildings contaminated with anthrax.