Richard Broene

Professor of Chemistry

Phone (207) 725-3626
Title Professor
Department Chemistry
2nd Title Chair
2nd Department CHEMISTRY
Work Location 50 Druckenmiller Hall
E-Mail rbroene@bowdoin.edu
Broene: Bowdoin College: Chemistry

On leave for the 2011-12 academic year. 



Education:

B.S. Chemistry, Hope College (1985)
Ph.D. Organic Chemistry, University of California, Los Angeles (1990)

Rick Broene received his BS in Chemistry from Hope College (Holland MI) in 1985 at which time he was was honored with a Sigma Xi summer research award. While at Hope he worked with Mike Doyle investigating the decomposition mechanism of trioxodinitrate(II) in the presence of metalloproteins. He went on to graduate school at UCLA, where he worked with Francois Diederich on the synthesis and study of molecules with high carbon to hydrogen ratios (graphite-like molecules) specifically, the synthesis of circumanthracene. While there he also helped to design and synthesized the first asymmetric podand to be used for molecular recognition. He received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 1990. In a complete change of direction after grad school, he was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, where he studied organometallic chemistry. While there, he reported the first method for highly enantioselective reduction of unfunctionalized trisubstituted olefins and achieved diastereoselective syntheses of indoles, indolines, and isoquinolines using zirconocene intermediates. In 1998, Professor Broene was a Visiting Staff Member at Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. While at LANL, he continued to develop his interest in both homogeneous asymmetric catalysis while investigating the immobilization of catalysts on solid supports. This interest was expanded during the 2004-05 academic year when he was a visiting scholar at UNC Chapel Hill working the the broadly defined area of late transition metal catalyzed polymerization reactions. Research grants from the NSF, PRF, Research Corporation, CUR, Pfizer and DOE have enabled 55 students to work on projects in his labs over the past 17 years.

Research Interests

Professor Broene's research interests focus on the use of transition and lanthanide-series metals to accomplish asymmetric organic syntheses, dimerizations as well as the rational, metal-facilitated synthesis of ligands for chiral catalyts.

There are several projects currently underway in his research labs. The first investigates the ability of tethered bis-indenyl ligands to serve as proto-C2 symmetric ligands for lanthanide metals, forming metallocene complexes. The work in this area showed that the two-carbon tether was too short to allow the preferred formation of the racemic form of the complex, favoring instead the meso form. This is in part due to the large ionic radius of these f-electron elements. We use both traditional organic chemistry and zirconocene-mediated reactions for the synthesis of these ligands.

A second area investigates the use of conformationally constrained ligands to provide more favorable orientations for cobalt catalyzed dimerization of alpha olefins.  We have synthesized useful quantities of quinoline substituted Cp* ligands and are investigating if they favor 2,1 insertion over 1,2 insertion reactions.  Additionally we have synthesized phosphabenzene and are exploring its coordination chemistry to Co.

Student Research Projects »

Curriculum vitae in PDF formpdf »