Biosketch
Jonas C. Peters is an inorganic chemist who has advanced conceptually new approaches to catalysis along with insightful mechanistic studies. His laboratory is especially known for (i) developing synthetic catalysts for Fe-mediated nitrogen fixation, (ii) photo-induced Cu-catalyzed cross-couplings, and (iii) proton-coupled-electron transfer (PCET) mediated electrocatalysis. Peters was born in Chicago, Illinois, attended Lane Technical High School in Chicago, and earned a BSc degree at the University of Chicago (’93). He then went to the University of Nottingham as a Marshall Scholar (’94), followed by a PhD at MIT (’98), and postdoctoral training as a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley (’99). Peters has been on the faculty at Caltech since 1999, including a period on the faculty at MIT from 2007-2010. He is currently Bren Professor of Chemistry in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and has served as Director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute at Caltech since 2015.
Research Interests
Peters’ laboratory has created transition metal catalysts, electrocatalysts, and photocatalysts with relevance to distributed nitrogen fixation, renewable solar fuels, and bond constructions for organic synthesis, as in photoinduced N–alkylations catalyzed by copper. They have invented new catalytic transformations accompanied by detailed mechanistic studies, including the characterization of highly reactive paramagnetic intermediates. His laboratory’s work in Fe-mediated nitrogen fixation is exemplary. Iron is now widely believed to be the biologically relevant active site metal for nitrogen fixation, but how this occurs remains unsolved. Peters’ laboratory first discovered synthetic iron model catalysts that mediate catalytic nitrogen fixation. They then elucidated the mechanisms by which these iron catalysts operate, which include intermediates featuring reactive metal-to-nitrogen multiple bonds, a class of species his lab posited as plausible intermediates in earlier synthetic model work. Peters’ laboratory has more recently developed strategies for reductive (electro)catalysis and photo(electro)catalysis using inorganic systems that feature electron-transfer or proton-coupled-electron transfer mediators in the presence of a co-catalyst. This approach can enable delivery of proton/electron currency to unsaturated substrates (e.g., N2 or unsaturated organic substrates) with dramatically diminished competing hydrogen evolution, efficiently pinning complex multi-electron/proton electrocatalytic transformations to the redox potential of the PCET mediator.
Membership Type
Member
Election Year
2024
Primary Section
Section 14: Chemistry