Sustainable Catalysis Lab

The Park lab is working on chemical challenges at the interface of organic and inorganic synthesis. Chemical synthesis is a vital tool for constructing new substances with a molecular precision; its intrinsic complexity, however, raises critical issues associated with efficiency, selectivity, and environmental impact. Our goal is to address these unmet challenges by seamless integration of techniques in synthetic chemistry, asymmetric catalysis, excited state chemistry, and data science. To this end, we are targeting rational design of novel reagents and 3d base metal catalysts to trigger unconventional reactivity with a minimal, sustainable energy input. Trainees will acquire experimental techniques such as air-free chemical synthesis, high-pressure gas handling, and photolysis. Spectroscopic tools including NMR, IR, MS, SC-XRD, EPR, Mössbauer, CV, UV-Vis, TCSPC, and TAS will be routinely used to characterize newly synthesized compounds. Computational techniques including DFT calculation, post-HF methods, multivariate parameterization, and even machine learning are our workhorse to develop mechanistically guided hypothesis and understand electronic structures of the transition metal complexes.