Student Profile: Lauren Doyle

Lauren Doyle’s research in organometallic chemistry earn her a place among the top 10 finalists for 2016 Reaxys PhD Prize

Lauren Doyle’s research, which takes a novel approach to breaking down nitrous oxide (N2O) into its component parts, earned her a place among the top ten finalists — and the only Canadian contender — for the 2016 Reaxys PhD Prize, which recognizes excellence and innovation in synthetic chemistry. She recently returned from the Reaxys Symposium in London, England, where she and the top 45 finalists presented their research to an international judging panel.

After participating in research opportunities since her first year as an undergraduate, Doyle found her graduate research calling in an organometallics laboratory. Organometallic chemistry is a branch of chemistry that focuses on using metal compounds as catalysts to mediate reactions.

Alongside supervisor Warren Piers and colleagues in the Piers Group lab, Doyle is using iridium to create new catalysts that lower energy barriers and make difficult chemical reactions much easier to accomplish. Doyle’s research looks at the very fundamentals of breaking N2O down into water and nitrogen.

“In my work, I design and synthesize iridium complexes that can hopefully activate (or react with) relatively inert small molecules. One of those small molecules is nitrous oxide, and most of my research has involved studying how these reactions take place,” she explains.

“N2O has some uses, but it’s also a greenhouse gas and one of the fastest-growing emissions that we’re producing,” she says. “When it gets into the stratosphere, it acts as a greenhouse gas and also leads to ozone depletion.”

Using an unprecedented level of detail, Doyle examined the mechanisms involved in breaking down N2O by using specially-designed molecules called ligands that support the iridium center. “I think my research has high impact in the sense that what we do has never been done from this angle before,” she says.

Even with the benefits and equipment of a specialized laboratory, N2O reduction is difficult to accomplish, and requires high temperatures and harsh conditions. Without a catalyst, N2O and hydrogen would need to be heated to extremely high temperatures before reacting. The complex that Doyle used allowed that reaction to occur at room temperature. This can happen using a heterogeneous catalyst, but Doyle says those reactions are very difficult to study in detail.

Accomplishing this reaction using a homogeneous solution however, is a breakthrough in understanding and seeing the reaction occur step-by-step. “It’s not very easy to do usually, so that’s what’s exciting about it: that we can actually see what’s happening,” says Doyle.

“Now, hopefully, we can learn more about how these reactions happen. Then, others can take that knowledge and build even better catalysts. Hopefully in the future, we can prevent these greenhouse gases from reaching the stratosphere at all.”