About

Tristan Lambert is the William T. Miller Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University, affiliated with the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology within the College of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on catalysis, particularly the development of novel catalytic strategies for selective organic synthesis. His projects include electrophotocatalysis, catalytic carbonyl-olefin metathesis, and the study of aromatic ions. Lambert's approach combines synthetic and physical organic techniques to develop practical catalyst systems, aiming to answer questions of reactivity and mechanism while providing solutions of practical value for organic synthesis.

Research topics

• Chemistry
• Photochemistry
• Optics
• Organic chemistry
• Chemical physics
• Physics
• Thermodynamics

Selected publications

• Interrogating the Carboxylation of Potassium β-Diketonates and β-Diketiminates by Carbon Dioxide

  The Journal of Organic Chemistry · 2026-02-18

  articleCorresponding

  Enolate carboxylation by CO2 is essential to applications ranging from polymer synthesis to CO2 capture, yet the CO2 reactivity of stabilized enolates, such as β-dicarbonyl enolates, remains understudied. Combining detailed NMR and DFT studies, we report the reactivity of diverse potassium β-diketonates and β-diketiminates toward CO2. Our findings reveal the critical role of β′-substituents on β-diketiminates and an unexpected CO2-concentration-dependent reactivity switch, offering structural insights for designing materials with tunable CO2 reactivity.

  PublisherDOI

• Harnessing Oxidized Amines as Robust Sorbents for Carbon Capture

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025-02-12 · 8 citations

  articleCorresponding

  Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is imperative to mitigating global climate change, but current implementation falls far short of that needed to reach net-zero global emissions by 2050. Aqueous amine solutions, conceived over a century ago, are the current leading technology for CO2 separations. However, amines suffer from chemical instability under scrubbing conditions, corrosiveness, and toxicity, hindering their long-term implementation at multiton scales. Herein, we demonstrate for the first time that tertiary amine N-oxides, an oxidative degradation product of amines, can remove CO2 from dilute streams, including flue gas from a natural gas-fired power plant. Our extensive spectroscopic and computational studies support that the nontoxic, noncorrosive, and inexpensive 4-methylmorpholine N-oxide (MMNO) captures CO2 under humid conditions via the formation of a hydrogen-bond-stabilized bicarbonate (HCO3–) species, despite being significantly less basic than an amine. Accelerated aging studies show that MMNO exhibits superior oxidative and thermal stability compared to structurally similar amines, highlighting the potential of eco-friendly N-oxides in industrial carbon capture applications.

  PublisherDOI

• Cross Carbonyl-Olefin Metathesis (XCOM) of Unactivated Olefins

  ChemRxiv · 2025-10-02

  articleSenior author

  A method for the olefination of aryl aldehydes with unactivated alkenes via cross carbonyl-olefin metathesis (XCOM) is described. Reaction of an aldehyde substrate and a cis-1,2-disubstituted or monosubstituted olefin with the HBF4 salt of 2,3-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane results in high-yielding olefination with exclusive trans stereoselectivity. The reaction is shown to accommodate a range of substitution patterns on the aryl aldehyde and a diverse set of functional groups, including protic functionality that would complicate traditional olefination methods. We show that product inhibition arising from the aliphatic aldehyde side product limits catalytic turnover, but that distillative removal of this component renders catalysis feasible.

  PublisherDOI

• US must support chemistry research

  Science · 2025-06-19

  letter
  PublisherDOI

• Interrogating the Carboxylation of β-Diketonates and β-Diketiminates by Carbon Dioxide

  ChemRxiv · 2025-12-07

  article

  Enolate carboxylation by CO2 is essential to applications ranging from polymer synthesis to CO2 capture, yet the CO2-reactivity of stabilized enolates, such as β-dicarbonyl enolates, remains understudied. Combining detailed NMR and DFT studies, we report the reactivity of diverse potassium β-diketonates and β-diketiminates towards CO2. Our findings reveal the critical role of β′-substituents on β-diketiminates and an unexpected CO2-concentration-dependent reactivity switch, offer-ing structural insights for designing materials with tunable CO2 reactivity.

  PublisherDOI

• Defect-Engineered Metal–Organic Frameworks as Bioinspired Heterogeneous Catalysts for Amide Bond Formation

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2024-12-04 · 14 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  The synthesis of amides from amines and carboxylic acids is the most widely carried out reaction in medicinal chemistry. Yet, most amide couplings are still conducted using stoichiometric reagents, leading to significant waste; few synthetic catalysts for this transformation have been adopted industrially due to their limited scope and/or poor recyclability. The majority of catalytic approaches focus on a single activation mode, such as enhancing the electrophilicity of the carboxylic acid partner using a Lewis acid. In contrast, nature effortlessly forges and breaks amide bonds using precise arrays of Lewis/Brønsted acidic and basic functional groups. Drawing inspiration from these systems, herein we report a simple defect engineering strategy to colocalize Lewis acidic Zr sites with other catalytically active species within porous metal–organic frameworks (MOFs). Specifically, the combination of pyridine N-oxide and Zr open metal sites within the defective framework MOF-808-py-Nox produces a heterogeneous catalyst that facilitates amide bond formation with broad functional group compatibility from amines and carboxylic acids, esters, or primary amides. Extensive density functional theory (DFT) calculations using cluster models support that the formation of a hydrogen-bonding network at the defect sites facilitates amide bond formation in this material. MOF-808-py-Nox can be recycled at least five times without losing significant crystallinity, porosity, or catalytic activity and can be employed in continuous flow. This defect engineering strategy can be potentially generalized to produce libraries of catalytically active MOFs with different combinations of colocalized functional groups.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• CCDC 2247285: Experimental Crystal Structure Determination

  The Cambridge Structural Database · 2024-01-10

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  An entry from the Cambridge Structural Database, the world’s repository for small molecule crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the CCDC and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures.

  PublisherDOI

• Harnessing Oxidized Amines as Robust Sorbents for Carbon Capture

  ChemRxiv · 2024-11-25 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is imperative to mitigating climate change1. Aqueous amine solutions are the leading technology for CO2 separations2, but they suffer from chemical instability under scrubbing conditions, corrosiveness, and toxicity, hindering their long-term deployment3–5. Herein, we demonstrate that tertiary amine N-oxides, an oxidative degradation product of amines6,7, can remove CO2 from dilute streams, including flue gas from a natural gas-fired power plant. Extensive spectroscopic and computational studies support that the non-toxic, non-corrosive, and inexpensive 4-methylmorpholine N-oxide (MMNO) captures CO2 under humid conditions via the formation of a hydrogen-bond-stabilized bicarbonate (HCO3−) species, despite being significantly less basic than an amine. MMNO exhibits improved oxidative and thermal stability compared to structurally similar amines, highlighting the potential of N-oxides to complement traditional amine-based scrubbers for industrial carbon capture applications.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hydrazine-Catalyzed Ring-Opening Metathesis Polymerization of Cyclobutenes

  ChemRxiv · 2024-05-24 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Materials formed by the ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) of cyclic olefins are highly valued for industrial and academic applications but are difficult to prepare free of metal contaminants. Here we describe a highly efficient metal-free ROMP of cyclobutenes using hydrazine catalysis. Reactions can be initiated via in situ condensation of a [2.2.2]-bicyclic hydrazine catalyst with an aliphatic or aromatic aldehyde initiator. The polymerizations show living characteristics, achieving excellent control over molecular weight, low dispersity values, and high chain-end fidelity. Additionally, the hydrazine can be used in substoichiometric amounts relative to the aldehyde chain-end while maintaining good control over molecular weight and low dispersity values, indicating that a highly efficient chain transfer mechanism is occurring.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• CCDC 2247284: Experimental Crystal Structure Determination

  The Cambridge Structural Database · 2024-01-10

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  An entry from the Cambridge Structural Database, the world’s repository for small molecule crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the CCDC and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Development of User-Friendly Controlled Cationic Polymerizations Under Ambient Conditions

  NSF · $600k · 2021–2025

• Enantioselective Catalysis with Cyclopropenimines

  NIH · $1.6M · 2012–2018

• New Platforms for Catalysis

  NSF · $420k · 2015–2018

• CAREER: New Catalytic Reactions for Organic Synthesis: Novel Strategies for Cyclopropane Synthesis and Oxidative Carbonylation

  NSF · $550k · 2010–2015

• Enantioselective Bronsted Acid Catalysis with Chiral Cyclopentadienes

  NIH · $601k · 2016–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Luis M. Campos

  Tecnológico de Monterrey

  42 shared

• Jessica L. Freyer

  Columbia University

  41 shared

• Spencer D. Brucks

  Harvey Mudd College

  41 shared

• Alexander Böker

  Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research

  36 shared

• Alexandra E. Porter

  36 shared

• Anna P. Constantinou

  Imperial College London

  36 shared

• Catriona M. McGilvery

  Imperial College London

  36 shared

• Yanlan Liu

  Nankai University

  36 shared

Labs

• Lambert GroupPI

Awards & honors

• Science Adv. 2023
• Nature 2023
• Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2022
• Science 2021
• J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2020