ASU Internship-Week 1

    I am excited to start blogging once again, and I hope everyone is having a great start to the year.This semester, I will be doing my internship at ASU with Professor Ryan Trovitch's research group. The focus of my research will be synthesizing a molybdenum metal complex, and studying its catalytic behavior for reducing carbon dioxide to methanol and other useful organic compounds.
    The catalyst is an inorganic coordination complex, that consists of a central atom (called coordination center), surrounded by various organic/inorganic molecules (called ligands). The ligand in my catalyst is called alpha-diimine (DI). The ligand and the molybdenum atom share electron density, which gives the molybdenum a 2+ net charge (resonance structure). Due to this 2+ net charge, the molybdenum complex can undergo some very interesting chemistry...

Picture of the ligand