The Parent Lab researches methods for improving the efficiency and reducing the waste generated from chemical processes using the principles of green chemistry. Our group is particularly interested in using the oxygen gas from air as a benign oxidant for driving oxidative chemical reactions. As members of the NDSU Center for Sustainable Materials Science, we are particularly interested in using our green oxidation chemistries to enable the cost-effective synthesis of polymer from biomass derived feedstocks. For more information about our specific research aims, please see our research page.
Harnessing the Power of Oxygen
Oxidation is the removal of electrons from a substance, and is essential to a wide variety of everyday processes, from charging your cell-phone to digesting your lunch. Designing more efficient oxidation methods thus impacts nearly every aspect of our lives. In the Parent lab, one of our primary focuses is developing methods for using oxygen […]
Developing cost-effective, sustainable sources of electricity is one of the major challenges facing society. While immense progress has been made in solar and wind power generation, there remain many challenges to wide-scale deployment of these technologies. In particular, both solar and wind power are extremely intermittent, leading to the use for inefficient quick-response fossil fuel […]
Mechanism of Autoxidation in Polymer Curing
Polymers were integral to many of the technological advances made in the 20th century, and developing improved polymers will be necessary as we continue to advance in the 21st century. As part of the North Dakota Center for Sustainable Materials Science (CSMS) our group is working on understanding the chemical mechanisms of polymerization. One major […]
A big Parent lab welcome to Austin MacRae and Yutaro Aimoto. Austin joins our research group as a new graduate student in chemistry at NDSU, and is working with the CSMS developing more sustainable syntheses of polymer building blocks. Yutaro is a visiting graduate student from Prof. Ken Sakai’s lab at Kyushu university, and will […]
Congratulations to Christian, Hashini, and Hanna on their Dalton Paper!
Our group’s first manuscript has just been published in Dalton Transactions! Congratulations to Christian, Hashini, and Hanna for all of their hard work. You can read their article on C-H bond oxidation by Ru on the RSC website here: Electrochemical properties and C-H bond oxidation activity of [Ru(tpy)(pyalk)Cl]+ and [Ru(tpy)(pyalk)OH]+.
