Sheridan, Robert S. - University of Nevada-Reno

研究领域

Our research revolves around highly reactive organic molecules. These unstable and elusive intermediates, such as carbenes, nitrenes, and biradicals, are especially important in photochemistry, but their chemistry and properties are poorly understood. Moreover, these molecules are related to searches for organic conducting and magnetic materials. Much of the organic synthesis that we carry out involves making previously unknown compounds, and we spend a considerable amount of our time developing new synthetic methods to tackle these challenging molecules. A specialized technique that we use to study reaction intermediates involves matrix isolation photochemistry. In this method, organic molecules are frozen into glasses of inert gas at extremely low temperatures (10 Kelvin). The samples are then irradiated with UV light to generate highly reactive intermediates. The low temperatures and high dilution in inert surroundings protect these otherwise unstable species from reaction. IR and UV spectra of the samples, acquired at low temperature, tell us a great deal about the bonding and structures of the products. Finally, we carry out a variety of ab initio and DFT electronic structure calculations to model the structures, spectra, and electronics of these novel molecules.

近期论文

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Song, M.G.; Sheridan, R. S. Regiochemical Substituent Switching of Spin States in Aryl(trifluoromethyl)carbenes. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, ASAP. Song, M.G.; Sheridan, R. S. Effects of CF3 Groups and Charged Substituents on Singlet Carbene Stabilities: A Density Functional Theory Study. J. Phys. Org. Chem. 2011, 24, 889-893. Sheridan, R. S. Exploring Matrix Isolated Carbenes and Biscarbenes with Electronic Spectroscopy as a Guide. J. Phys. Org. Chem. 2010, 23, 326-332. Wang, J.; Sheridan, R. S. A Singlet Aryl-CF3 Carbene: 2- Benzothienyl(trifluoromethyl)carbene and Interconversion with a Strained Cyclic Allene. Org. Lett. 2007, 9, 3177-3180. Sheridan, R. S. Quantum Mechanical Tunneling in Organic Reactive Intermediates. In Reviews in Reactive Intermediate Chemistry; Moss, R. A., Platz, M. S., Jones, M. J., Jr., Eds.; John Wiley & Sons, 2007, pp 415-463. Zuev, P. S.; Sheridan, R. S.; Sauers, R. R.; Moss, R. A.; Chu, G. Conformational Product Control in the Low-Temperature Photochemistry of Cyclopropylcarbenes. Org. Lett. 2006, 8, 4963-4966. Moss, R. A.; Tian, J.; Sauers, R. R.; Sheridan, R. S.; Bhakta, A.; Zuev, P. S. Kinetic Studies of the Cyclization of Singlet Vinylchlorocarbenes. Org. Lett. 2005, 7, 4645. Nikitina, A.; Sheridan, R. S. Geometry and Aromaticity in Highly Strained Heterocyclic Allenes: Characterization of a 2,3-Didehydro-2H-thiopyran. Org. Lett., 2005, 7, 4467. Chu, G.; Moss, R. A.; Sauers, R. R.; Sheridan, R. S.; Zuev, P. S. Activation Energies for the 1,2-Carbon Migration of Ring-Fused Cyclopropylchlorocarbenes. Tetrahedron Lett. 2005, 46, 4137. Zuev, P. S.; Sheridan, R. S. Singlet Vinylcarbenes: Spectroscopy and Photochemistry. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2004, 126, 12220. Moss, R. A.; Sauers, R. R.; Sheridan, R. S.; Tian, J.; Zuev, P. S. Carbon Tunneling in the Ring Expansion of Noradamantylchlorocarbene. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2004, 126, 10196. Zuev, P. S.; Sheridan, R. S.; Albu, T. V.; Truhlar, D. G.; Hrovat, D. A.; Borden, W. T. Carbon Tunneling from a Single Quantum State. Science 2003, 299, 867.