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.

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."

A paper authored by Kerry Barnett, James Howard, Renee Stullich, Adam Shipley, and Colin Treager entitled, "Air-Stable [(R3P)PdCl2]2 Complexes of Neopentylphosphines as Cross- Coupling Precatalysts: Catalytic Application and Mechanism of Catalyst Activation and Deactivation," was published in Organometallics.  This paper describes the use of [(R3P)PdCl2]2 complexes as catalysts in the Suzuki coupling.  A study of the mechanism of conversion of the Pd(II) precatalyst to the Pd(0) active species showed that palladacycle formation was a competitive pathway in acetonitrile.  Switching the solvent to toluene eliminated formation of the palladacycle byproduct.  This solvent switch allowed a 50-fold decrease in catalyst loading.

A collaborative paper involving the Shaughnessy and Martin Bakker groups in Chemistry and the John van Zee group in Chemical & Biological Engineering was published in the Journal of Sol-Gel Science and Technology.  The paper entitled, "Copolymerization of Transition Metal Salen Complexes and Conversion into Metal Nanoparticles Supported on Hierarchically Porous Carbon Monoliths: A One Pot Synthesis," describes the incorporation of metal salen complexes in a carbon sol-gel.  Pyrolysis provides a carbon material with metal nanoparticles.