Courses
Organic Chemistry II and III; Advanced Undergraduate Research in Chemistry; Introduction to Research

Research Interests
What are the "tools" that allow us to construct molecules, and are these "tools" capable of building the structures we need in a timely and efficient manner? These two questions provide the motivation for Professor Moeller's group's exploration of electrochemistry. Because electrochemistry allows one to selectively manipulate the oxidation state of molecules, create reactive intermediates, and reverse the polarity of known functional groups, it provides and ideal method for discovering and exploring many new, synthetically useful reactions.

In a similar fashion, the Moeller group is taking advantage electrochemistry's ability to reverse the normal polarity of N-acyliminium ion formation in order to develop new approaches to diversity-oriented synthesis that allow for systematic variations within a core scaffold, to synthesize receptor-targeted molecular libraries that contain conformational probes for rapidly gathering information about the three dimensional requirements of the receptor, and to construct new peptide-based bioconjugates.

Electrochemistry can also be used to synthesize reactive reagents. For example, in collaboration with scientists at Combimatrix, Professor Moeller's lab is currently using electrochemistry as a tool for isolating transition metal based reactions to specific, preselected locations on a chip. 

Selected Publications:

• Eden Tesfu, Karl Mauer, Steven R. Ragsdale, and Kevin D. Moeller, “Building Addressable Libraries: The Use of Electrochemistry for Generating Reactive Pd(II) Reagents at Pre-Selected Sites on a Chip,”J. Am. Chem. Soc., 126, 6212 (2004).
• H. Sun and K.D.Moeller, “Building functionalized peptidomimetics: new electroauxiliaries and the use of a chemical oxidant for introducing n-acyliminium ions into peptides,” Organic Letters, 5, 3189 (2003).
• A. J. Mihelcic and K.D.Moeller, “Anodic cyclization reactions: the total synthesis of alliacol,” J. Am. Chem. Soc., 125, 36 (2003).