by Michael Arvin
Current Address: Dept. of Chemistry, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson  AZ  85721

 Proud Member of the American Chemical Society

I'm sure you'd like to know what in the world pyrazoles are. The image below is of one of my favorites, 3,5-dimethylpyrazole.

By now I'm sure you've guessed I'm a chemist. Actually I'm a chemistry student at the  University of Central Arkansas  in Conway and will graduate with a B.S. in May, 2001. I do synthetic inorganic chemistry for my undergraduate research project, working as part of the research group under Dr. Patrick Desrochers . I perform the synthetic work for the group. Others in the group are studying the reactivities and properties of the products I make. I synthesize pyrazoles and make a variety of ligands from them. Ligands are basically anything we can attach to a metal ion (so nearly anything can go on there). The ligands belong to a class called the tris-pyrazolyl borates. Tris because 3 of the pyrazoles are added and borate because they all bond to the boron atom. I make them by cooking the pyrazoles with potassium borohydride at around 175 to 210 degrees Celsius. This forms potassium tris-pyrazolyl borate.  Through further reactions the potassium ion is replaced with a thallium ion, which is then replaced with a nickel ion. The usefulness of these compounds may seem trivial at first, but we hope to model the active sites of enzymes. Enzymes are able to do chemistry at body temperature that we can only match with high temperatures and pressures.

The pyrazoles I have synthesized and produced ligands from up to this point are:
 
 

These pyzrazoles and subsequent tris(pyrazolyl)borates ligands are synthesized according to procedures referenced in

Trofimenko, S. Scorpionates: The Coordination Chemistry of Polypyrazolborate Ligands; River Edge, NJ : Imperial College Press, 1999.

This is just the current work in a project which has been active for several years, so other ligands were investigated before I became involved in the project. Dr. Desrochers would no doubt enjoy discussing the details with anyone expressing interest.
We have a great deal of further work in mind for this ongoing project. Unfortunately, I will only be here to see part of it, since I will only be in Conway until July, 2001.
 
 
 
 
 
 

For those who were bored enough to read this far below are a couple of my favorite websites.

 Sky and Telescope Magazine

Comments? Email me!

A small paper about tris-pyrazolyl borates: html or pdf
 
 
 
 

And I'll end this page with a couple of my favorite places. It's just too bad they are so far away from here.

Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah

Zion National Park, Utah