A paper by Ethan Hu, Corrie Burlas, Sabrina Curley, Tomasz Gruchala and Fengrui Qu entitled, "Effect of Aryl Ligand Identity on Catalytic Performance of Trineopentylphosphine Arylpalladium Complexes in N-Arylation Reactions," has been published in Organometallics.  The paper describes the role of steric effects of aryl ligands on the performance of palladium catalysts in C-N cross-coupling reactions.

The last paper from Dr. Kerry Barnett's dissertation has been published in Inorganic Chemistry in collaboration with the Dixon Group.  This paper provides a detailed structural analysis of the palladium complexes of trineopentylphosphine ligands using computational and experimental data.  The highly flexible trineopentylphosphine ligand adopts a very sterically demanding conformation when coordinated to 1- or 2-coordinate palladium centers.  Unusually, this very sterically demanding ligand is highly pyramidalized due to the low back-side strain of the neopentyl groups.  When coordinated to a 3- or 4-coordinate palladium center, trineopentylphoshine adopts a less sterically demanding conformation.

Tomasz Gruchala has been selected as a recipient of the Randall Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award.  The Randall award is given to students who have achieved excellent performance in undergraduate research at The University of Alabama.  Tom's research has focused on the use of palladium-aryl compounds as air-stable precatalysts for C-N bond forming reactions.  

A paper authored by Huaiyuan "Ethan" Hu, Ashley Gilliam, and Fengrui Qu entitled, "Enolizable Ketones as Activators of Palladium(II) Precatalysts in Amine Arylation Reactions," has been published in ACS Catalysis.​  The paper describes a novel reduction of palladium(II) precatalysts using enolizable ketones.

A review authored by Kevin Shaughnessy has been published in Current Organic Chemistry.  The review is entitled, "Monodentate Trialkylphosphines as Privileged Ligands in Metal-Catalyzed Cross-Coupling Reactions."