One of the main techniques we use to characterize reaction products is Gas Chromatography (GC). Our Thermo Scientific Trace 1300 holds two columns simultaneously. The first is a standard polar column attached to a standard split/splitless injection port and a flame ionization detector (FID). We use this column to separate and quantify the organic products […]
Our group uses this Pine WaveDriver potentiostat for our electrochemical studies. This potentiostat is capable of performing cyclic voltammetry (CV), bulk electrolysis (BE), and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), which we use to determine the oxidation and reduction potentials of the catalysts we design in the lab, as well as those of the substrates we are […]
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 […]
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 […]
Each day we break down sugars, fats, and proteins in order to obtain the energy we need to survive. Central to this process is the consumption of oxygen to effect the efficient re-oxidation of reduced co-enzymes. Oxygen is also widely used in other biochemical processes, demonstrating its versatility as an oxidant. In spite of oxygen’s […]
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]+.
Parent Lab at the ACS GLRM in Fargo!
Congratulations to everyone in the lab for excellent presentations at the ACS Great Lakes Regional meeting in Fargo last week! We got a lot of great comments from the conference participants, and are back in the lab ready to make them into reality!
