Christopher W. Bielawski

bielawski@cm.utexas.edu
Organic Chemistry
Assistant Professor, Faculty
Christopher W. Bielawski

Contact Information

Office
WEL 4.230c
Office Phone
232-3839
Lab
WEL 4.228
Lab Phone
232-3448
Fax
471-8696

Research Group

Bielawski Research Group

Education

BS, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1997);   PhD, California Institute of Technology (2003); Postdoctoral Studies, California Institute of Technology (2004)

Awards

Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2008);   3M Nontenured Faculty Award (2008);   National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2007);   Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar Award (2007);   Beckman Foundation Young Investigator Award (2007);   DuPont Young Professor Award (2007);   National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship (2003);   Unilever Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Polymer Chemistry (2003);   Dow Innovation Recognition Award (2001);   ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Graduate Fellowship (2000);   National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship (1997);   Pfizer Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (1996)

Organic & Organometallic Materials, Polymer Chemistry and Catalysis

We are broadly interested in synthesizing, studying, and applying unique organic and organometallic polymeric materials. Often this requires the discovery and development of new fundamental reactions. As such, our research is highly multidisciplinary: students are educated in a wide range of different chemistries and exposed to a variety of techniques. Brief summations of current projects are listed below:

A Modular Approach to Conjugated Organic and Organometallic Polymers: We have recently discovered that difunctional N-heterocyclic carbenes and their presursors are versatile and useful building blocks in the construction of conjugated polymeric materials: they can be homopolymerized or copolymerized with electrophiles including various transition metals to form the respective organic and organometallic polymers. We are currently exploring their use in electronic devices, as new drug delivery systems, and as the foundation for self-healing materials.



Reaction Development: “Clicking” Together Carbenes and Azides: Click chemistry – where a spontaneous reaction between complementary partners is used to rapidly construct molecular complexity – has found utility in a multitude of medicinal, biological, materials, and pharmaceutical applications. In an effort to help expand this powerful synthetic repertoire, we have discovered that N-heterocyclic carbenes react rapidly and quantitatively with azides to form triazenes. We believe this reaction has great potential in the synthesis of valuable nitrogen-rich substrates such as aziridines and guanidines and in electroactive azo polymers.



Metal-Mediated Synthesis of Functionalized Polyolefins: Securing the next generation of high-performance polymers is limited by incompatibilities of contemporary polymerization techniques with polar functional groups. We are developing a new series of metal catalysts to prepare well-defined and densely functionalized polyolefins.




Representative Publications

  • Boydston, A. J.; Pecinovsky, C. S.; Chao, S. T.; Bielawski, C W.  "Phase-Tunable Fluorophores Based Upon Benzobis(imidazolium) Salts" J. Am. Chem. Soc. 129 (2007): 14550-14551.

  • Khramov, D. M.; Bielawski, C. W.  "Donor-Acceptor Triazenes: Synthesis, Characterization, and Study of Their Electronic and Thermal Properties" J. Org. Chem. 72 (2007): 9407-9417.

  • Sanderson, M. D.; Kamplain, J. W.; Bielawski, C. W.  "Quinone-Annulated N-Heterocyclic Carbene—Transition-Metal Complexes: Observation of pi-Backbonding Using FT-IR Spectroscopy and Cyclic Voltammetry" J. Am. Chem. Soc. 128 (2006): 16514-16515.

  • Khramov, D. M.; Boydston, A. J.; Bielawski, C. W.  "Synthesis and Study of Janus Bis(carbene)s and Their Transition-Metal Complexes" Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 45 (2006): 6186-6189.

  • Boydston, A. J.; Williams, K. A.; Bielawski, C. W.  "A Modular Approach to Main-Chain Organometallic Polymers" J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127 (2005): 12496-12497.