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Meeting of the Princeton ACS Section
Wednesday, February 21, 2024
Dr. James F. Wishart
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY
“Ionic Liquids, Molten Salts, and their Radiation Chemistry”
Frick Laboratory, Taylor Auditorium, Princeton University
Mixer (in Atrium) 6:30 pm; Lecture 7:00 pm
Abstract: Ionic liquids (ILs, or low-temperature molten salts) have dramatically different properties compared to conventional molecular solvents, and they provide an unconventional and useful environment to test our theoretical understanding of primary radiation chemistry, charge transfer and other reactions. We are interested in how IL properties influence physical and dynamical processes that determine the stability and lifetimes of reactive intermediates and thereby affect the courses of reactions and product distributions, for example the competition between excess electron solvation dynamics and the scavenging of electrons in different states of solvation. These investigations require us to delve deeply into the physical chemistry connections between IL structure, dynamics, and reactivity. In 2018 we began to apply the approaches and insights we gained from ionic liquids to understanding the behavior of high temperature molten salts for use in molten salt reactors (a very promising 4th-generation nuclear reactor technology), through the Molten Salts in Extreme Environments (MSEE) EFRC. There are many parallels despite the wide differences in temperature and ionic structure. I will describe how MSEE is using state-of-the-art instrumentation and computational capabilities to paint a detailed picture of how molten salts are structured on the atomic level and how that structure controls the speciation and properties of solute metal ions. The chemical effects of radiation on salts and solutes will be described through the reaction mechanisms of primary radical species and comparisons with ionic liquid radiation chemistry.
Biography: James F. Wishart is the Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Molten Salts in Extreme Environments Energy Frontier Research Center and a Distinguished Chemist in the Chemistry Division of Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he has worked for 36 years. He has been studying the physical chemistry and radiation chemistry of ionic liquids, and recently molten salts, for 22 years. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from MIT in 1979 and a Ph. D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Stanford University in 1985 (Advisor: Henry Taube, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1983). He was a postdoctoral research associate at Rutgers University between 1985 and 1987, where he worked with Stephan Isied and Kenneth Breslauer. He built the BNL Laser-Electron Accelerator Facility (LEAF) for picosecond electron pulse radiolysis in the mid-1990s. In 2019 he received the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medal from the Polish Radiation Research Society, for his distinguished achievements in the field of radiation chemistry and long-lasting and productive cooperation with Polish scientists. In December 2023 he received the Brookhaven National Laboratory Pinnacle Award in Science and Technology.
Reservations: There is no fee to attend the meeting but reservations are required. To register, go to our website at: https://www.princeton-acs.org/february-21-pacs-meeting
Visitor parking information: Visitors coming to the University on weekdays from 7 AM to 4 PM are welcome to park in Stadium Drive Garage. Frequent TigerTransit service is available from the garage to stops on Washington Road, Nassau Street, and University Place. Visitors parking in the garage are asked to register for a daily visitor permit. Registration can be done online in advance or at the garage during arrival.
After 4 PM on weekdays and all day on the weekend parking registration is not required. University visitors may park in any numbered and non-restricted parking lots, including the Theater Drive Garage, Prospect Ave Garage, and Stadium Drive Garage. Go to Princeton University Visitor Parking (https://transportation.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf611/files/documents/UniversityParkingMaps_Visitors.pdf) for lot locations and access
Meeting of the Princeton ACS Section
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Professor Michel. W. Barsoum
Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
“1D Lepidocrocite Titania-based Nanomaterials, Their Diverse Morphologies and Exceptional Properties”
Frick Chemistry Laboratory, Princeton University
Mixer (in Atrium) 6:30 pm; Lecture 7:00 pm
Abstract: Recently, we converted 15 binary and ternary titanium carbides, nitrides, borides, phosphides, and silicides into lepidocrocite-based, one dimensional, 1D, sub-nanometer nanofilaments, NFs, ≈ 5x7 Å in cross-section by reacting them with a tetramethylammonium hydroxide, TMAH, aqueous solution at ≈ 85 °C range for tens of hours. In some cases, the conversion is 100 % precluding the need for centrifuges, filters, etc. We currently routinely make 100 g batches in a lab setting. Depending on with what and the order the reaction products are washed, the 1D NFs self-assemble into loose, spaghetti-shaped fibers, ≈ 30 nm in diameter, fully inorganic TiO2 gels, pseudo 2D or porous mesoscopic particles. In all cases, the fundamental building block is 1D lepidocrocite NFs, ≈ 3 nm long, that self-assemble into the aforementioned morphologies. At this time, we believe that our materials are the only thermodynamically stable 1D NFs in water, with important implications in photo- and chemical catalysis. The production of hydrogen for times of the order of 6 months with production rates an order of magnitude higher than P25, will be discussed. The adsorption of some cations like uranium and dyes by the 1D NFs, that in some cases outperform high adsorption clays. We also discovered that some common dyes sensitize the 1D NFs which allows for their degradation using only visible light. This is important in this respect because the band gap energy, ≈ 4 eV, of our 1D NFs is a record for titania-based materials due to quantum confinement. Other applications will be touched upon as well.
Biography: Prof. Michel W. Barsoum is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University. He is an internationally recognized leader in the area of MAX phases and more recently the 2D solids labeled MXenes derived from the MAX phases. Most recently he also discovered a new universal mechanism – ripplocation - in the deformation of layered solids. With over 500 refereed publications and a Google h index is 139, his work has been cited almost 100,000 times to date. He was on the Web of Science’s highly cited researchers list in 2018 to 2023. In 2020, according to a recent Stanford University study, he had the highest c-index (combines citations and h-index) in the Materials Science subfield in 2022 and was 8th on the all-time list of material scientists in the world. He is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Society of Engineering Sciences, National Academy of Inventors, fellow of the American Ceramic Soc. and the World Academy of Ceramics. He is the author the books, MAX Phases: Properties of Machinable Carbides and Nitrides and Fundamentals of Ceramics, a leading textbook in his field. In 2020, he was awarded the International Ceramics Prize for basic science by the World Academy of Ceramics. This prize is awarded quadrennially and is one of the highest in his field. The prize was awarded for “… outstanding contribution in opening new horizons in material research and specifically for your pioneering work in MAX phases and their derivatives.”
Reservations: There is no fee to attend the meeting but reservations are required. To register, go to our website at: https://www.princeton-acs.org/march-12-pacs-meeting
Visitor parking information: Visitors coming to the University on weekdays from 7 AM to 4 PM are welcome to park in Stadium Drive Garage. Frequent TigerTransit service is available from the garage to stops on Washington Road, Nassau Street, and University Place. Visitors parking in the garage are asked to register for a daily visitor permit. Registration can be done online in advance or at the garage during arrival.
After 4 PM on weekdays and all day on the weekend parking registration is not required. University visitors may park in any numbered and non-restricted parking lots, including the Theater Drive Garage, Prospect Ave Garage, and Stadium Drive Garage.
Go to Princeton University Visitor Parking Map (https://transportation.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf611/files/documents/UniversityParkingMaps_Visitors.pdf) for lot locations and access.
GREETINGS FROM THE 2024 CHAIR
It is a great pleasure and honor for me to serve as the 2024 Chair of the Princeton ACS, following in the footsteps of predecessors in this role who have worked tirelessly to expand my scientific horizons as well, I’m sure, those of many other members and friends. Reflecting on over 30 years of membership, often in “the weeds” of my professional responsibilities, membership in the ACS allowed me to step out of what at times was a narrow focus on specific projects to understand not just the important role Chemistry plays in critical technologies as well as helping us to understand and protect our resources, but also the sheer beauty of our “Central Science.”
In 2015, the American Chemical Society offered an open-sourced scientific journal so named, available for anyone, irrespective of their profession or level of education to read on line, the ACS Central Science.
The editor of this journal is the recent Nobel Laureate, Carolyn Bertozzi. In a way, thinking about her work demonstrates the breadth of our “Central Science.” I work primarily in Pharmaceutical Bioanalytical chemistry professionally, and originally, I came across her work in connection with the analytical chemistry “mucins” a set of linked sugars that help give mucus it’s “slime.” That work was extremely elegant, and helped me to understand the wonder of a very complex but familiar classes of compounds, the sugars. I thus thought of her in connection with mass spectrometry of mucins, but that isn’t what earned her the Nobel Prize, I was surprised to find. Her prize was for “click chemistry” a precise and fast synthetic tool for making, among other things, sugars, easy for living things to synthesize, but once, and to some extent, still, difficult to make in the lab.
While clearly some of the articles therein are technical, I encourage not only my fellow chemists, and fellow scientists, but the general public, particularly our young people to take a look; to open an issue of ACS Central Science and scan the titles to recognize how chemistry can make us think, wonder, and understand, if only a little better, the universe in which we are privileged to live. Consider a title of the current issue as I write, “Interstellar Ices: A Factory of the Origin-of-Life Molecules” subtitled “Interstellar-ice chemistry paves the way for disclosing the mystery of the origin of life: amino acids and other prebiotic molecules are formed in space.” I’m sure I’m not alone in finding the point of that paper, “What role did deep space and indeed ice, play in the origins of life?” fascinating. And that’s what I hope to achieve in this role, a little bit, just enough to open the door to an intellectual, and indeed, if I really succeed, some emotional thrill. Not so long ago, a predecessor in the role of Princeton ACS Chair, Mukund Chorghade, let us in the Princeton ACS community know that Carolyn Bertozzi’s co-Nobel Laureate, K. Barry Sharpless would be speaking in Philadelphia at the Science History Institute (formerly the Chemical Heritage Institute) in Philadelphia, and I managed to attend. His lecture was fascinating for a piece of advice that extends perhaps beyond our field. That advice was this: “Even if you think you know why something won’t work, try it anyway because you could be wrong.”
I encourage those of you in our local chemical community and beyond, who are not already familiar with us, to attend our Princeton ACS meetings, which are open to all.
-David Jones
PACS to Mark Earth Week 2024
The Princeton Section of ACS will observe Earth Week with a seminar-discussion.
When: Tuesday evening, Apr 23rd
Where: Frick Chemistry Laboratory
Topic: Climate and Its Impact on Health and Ecosystems
All are welcome with pre-registration beginning in March.
Watch for registration and event details on the PACS website.
Confirmed guest speaker thus far:
Catherine Chen, MD, Assistant Professor, Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Please plan to join us on this timely topic!
-Barbara Ameer
Synthesis on Scale Symposium (SSOS) 2024
After three years of SOSS by Zoom, this year the annual SOSS, our fifth, was offered on site January 12, 2024 at the Rutgers University Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology. It was sponsored by the Princeton Section of the ACS and Rutgers University. As was the case for our inaugural, in-person, event in 2020, for 2024 this was a ¾-day symposium with four speakers, each a leading authority on pharmaceutical process chemistry, with a published and international reputation. The program is shown below; attendees numbered about 90. Ken Houk was our first SOSS academic speaker.
Speakers were:
- Harshkumar Patel, Bristol-Myers Squibb, “Development of a Sustainable Synthetic Route to BMS-986278;” introduced by Sarah Steinhardt (BMS)
- Kevin Campos, Merck, “Innovations in Synthetic Chemistry at Merck: Striving for the Ideal Commercial Manufacturing Process;”introduced by Marguerite Mohan (Merck)
-Chris Senanayake, TCG GreenChem, “Novel Synthetic Approaches toward Complex API Assembly;” introduced by Mukund Chorghade (THINQ Pharma, PACS, symposium co-organizer)
- Prof. Ken Houk, UCLA “Pericyclic Reactions in -Synthesis and Biosynthesis: Computational Elucidation;” introduced by Jennifer Albaneze-Walker (BMS, symposium co-organizer)
This local ACS symposium was, in 2020, the first of its kind, showcasing pure process chemistry in the middle of one of the hotbeds of large and small company pharmaceutical process development, namely central New Jersey. While past symposia in Green Chemistry and symposia at national meetings and Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) have dealt with the same general subject, this symposium has a unique structure.
We expect that, as the result of its participants, audience, and format, these presentations have encouraged one-on-one interactions among graduate students, postdoctorals, and undergraduates, and professional industrial and academic chemists with common interests in chemical processes.
Spencer Knapp, ACS Princeton Section
Professor of Chemistry, Rutgers University
2024 Organizer, SOSS V
Noah Bissonnette, Immediate Past-Chair of PACS, opens the Fall PACS seminar this past October 25 on the 2023 NCW-theme “The Healing Power of Chemistry,” with PACS member and presenter Barbara Ameer, who gave an overview of insulin and incretin drug development.