Department of Organic Chemistry and Technology of Organic Substances

During last decade the Department of Organic Chemistry and Technology of Organic Substances developed various directions in basic and applied research in the area of chemistry of unsaturated and cage hydrocarbons, medicinal and theoretical chemistry. This research was supported by several national and international scientific organizations, part of the projects were carried out in cooperation with Universities of Erlangen, Goettingen and Giessen (Germany), Minnesota, Georgia and Stanford (USA), University of Rome (Italy), etc.  The projects in alkane chemistry were supported by the Ukrainian State Fund of Fundamental Research (2000–2008), Volkswagen Scientific Fund (1998–2001, 2003–2004),  NATO Scientific Fund (2001–2003).  The developments of new preparative transformations in alkane chemistry were financed by the joint program with German Research Fund (2005–2008) and the Sixth Frame Program of the European Community (FP6, 2005–2008) supported the medicinal chemistry projects.

The most important our results were well recognized by world scientific community. The discovery of new reactions in organic chemistry, e.g., the phase-transfer catalytic alkanes halogenation is featured by a cover page of the high impact European scientific journals (Angewandte Chemie), was included into modern organic chemistry textbooks and is now widely used in preparative organic chemistry. Another important new organic chemical reaction – the  diolefination of  ketones, has been discovered by Professor A.G.Yurchenko and as the new name reaction in organic chemistry.

The high authority of our Department in the field of computational modelling of organic transformations is reflected in the most influenced world peer review editions. Among the others, the publication in the most highly-rated chemical journal Chemical Reviews 2002, 102, 1551 - historically the first publication of Ukrainian chemists in this journal is worth mentioning.

The chemical reactions discovered at our Department have allowed to obtain a number of theoretically-interesting molecules. Their study allowed to reveal the influence of parity violation effects in weak electrostatic interactions utilizing the rigid stereoisomerical models: The synthesis of pseudotetrahedral polyhalogene-containing adamantane and cubane derivatives were investigated together with universities of Germany and the USA (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2006, 128, 5332); the importance of this approach was announced in Nature, 2006, 441, 4.

Our Department intensively develops some new medicinal products. For example, under the support of the European program FP6 together with physicists and chemists of Universities of Giessen and Marburg (Germany) the new method for preparation of perspective antimalaria drug FR900098 was developed (Org. Lett.2007, 9, 4379–4382).

Our Department also intensively develops a new direction in diadamantanoid chemistry. Diadamantanoids are the fragments of nanodiamands, however in contrast to the traditional nanodiamonds, consists of particles with certain sizes and topologies. In 2005, in cooperation with other Universities, we opened a series of publication «Functionalized Diadamantanoids» in the leading scientific journals (Chem. Eur. J. 2005, 11, 7091). These publications attracted the attention not only of the chemists, but also physicists and material scientists and the specialists in other fields. Already second article of this series has awarded by the cover page of leading world organic chemistry journal (Journal of Organic Chemistry 2006, 71, 8532).

Further study of the electronic properties of diamandoids in cooperation with university of Giessen (Germany) and physicists of Stanford University and Livermore National Laboratory (USA) allowed to observe the negative electron affinity of the organic molecule (on an example of diamondoid derivative). This discovery has been published in the most authoritative comprehensive scientific journal (Science 2007, 316, 1460). Importance of this discovery for nanotechnology as a whole and for nanoelectronic in particular is defined by an opportunity for the first time to create the cold electronic emitters based on organic molecules. It opens new and unexpected opportunities for construction of organic light-emitting diodes and displays. The publication of these results in Science (the first in the history NTUU “KPI”) has found the reflection on pages of journal Nature 2007, 2, 462.