Investigating the Hydrolysis Reactions of a Chemical Warfare Agent Surrogate. A Systematic Study using ¹H, ¹³C, ¹⁷O, ¹⁹F, ³¹P, and ³⁵Cl NMR Spectroscopy

During the summer of 2015, I participated in the DHS HS-STEM fellowship at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL, NM) under the supervision of Dr. Todd M. Alam in his Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy research group. While with the group, my main project involved pursing various hydrolysis reactions with Diethyl Chlorophosphate (DECP), a surrogate for the agent Sarin (GB). Specifically, I performed different hydrolysis reactions, monitored and tracked the different phosphorous containing species using phosphorous (31P) NMR spectroscopy. With the data collected, I performed kinetics studies mapping the rates of DECP hydrolysis. I also used the NMR of different nuclei such as 1H, 13C, 17O, and 35Cl to help understand the complexity of the reactions that take place. Finally, my last task at SNL was to work with Insensitive Nuclei Enhanced by Polarization Transfer (INEPT) NMR Spectroscopy optimizing conditions for 19F- 31P filtering NMR experiments.