Tags: Inorganic Seminar


In Situ Transmission Electron Microscopy for Li-ion and Beyond-Li Batteries

Energy storage is an essential enabler for future sustainable technologies by linking renewable resources with the power grid. Following the great success of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries in the commercial consumer electronics market, the increasing demand for improved energy density, lifetime, and safety in large-scale and power-intensive device applications calls for new materials with novel structures. The fundamental understanding of…


Overview of Porphyrin Distortions and Their Impact on Protein Function

Tetrapyrroles serve as a class of small molecules that can perform diverse and complex reactions. From the transport and storage of oxygen in animals to the conversion of light into chemical energy in plants, these macrocyclic cofactors are essential to life on earth.1 The most well-studied of the tetrapyrrole family are the iron containing heme porphyrins. In the absence of a protein environment, heme porphyrins take a planar conformation,…


Solution-based Synthesis and Applications of Multi-functional Nanoscale Systems

Our group is fundamentally interested in the design of a series of novel multi-functional nanoscale systems, using diverse chemical strategies. Such a multi-functional material often possesses unique catalytic and optoelectronic properties that are distinctive from and at times, superior to those of its individual constituent components. In essence, our hope and expectation is that chemical synthesis can be used to tune and tailor structure –…


Molecular Catalysis for Ammonia Oxidation

The extensive use of fossil fuels in industrial and transportation have arisen some issues for the environment such as air pollution, rises in sea level and frequency of extreme weather events.[1] In order to lessen those negative effects of using fossil fuels, a sustainable source of renewable energy is needed to achieve the zero-carbon emission target. Toward this goal, the development of energy transportation based on the interconversion of…


Transition Metal Trichalcogenides for Electronics Applications

Recently, transition metal trichalcogenides (MX3), a class of quasi-1D van der Waals materials, have revealed remarkable properties such as high current breakdown density and exceptional electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding.1-3 Their unique properties are attributed to their pseudo-one-dimensional electronic structure with strong in-plane anisotropy and single crystalline structure. Therefore, to effectively integrate these materials…


Investigation of Manganese-based Catalysts for Carbonyl Hydrosilylation

Since its discovery in the late 1940s, hydrosilylation reactions have become crucial in both industrial and laboratory settings to form silicon-carbon and silicon-oxygen bonds.1,2 Since Speier's exploration into chloroplatinic acid catalyzed olefin hydrosilylation, precious metal catalysts have been widely implemented for the production of silicon products including adhesives and rubber.2 It is estimated that the silicon industry worldwide…


Tetrasilicates with Cr(II), Fe(II) and Other Divalent Transition Metals in Square-Planar Coordination

Square-planar coordination is an ideal structure for tetracoordinate complexes in transition metal chemistry. The presence of high spin square-planar complexes is unusual for most of the d metal ions that have a d electron configuration ≥ 4, including but not limited to d4 Cr(II) and d6 Fe(II) due to the relatively large energy separation of dx2 -y2 orbital from the rest of the d orbitals in square-planar geometry.1,2 There are several examples…


How Metal Ions in the Brain Tip the Toxic Balance of the Killer Prion Protein

A prion is a misfolded form of the cellular prion protein, PrPC. Although the role of PrP in neurodegeneration was established over 30 years ago, there is little understanding of the protein’s normal function, and how misfolding leads to profound disease. Recent work shows that PrPC coordinates the cofactors Cu2+ and Zn2+, and regulates the distribution of these essential metal ions in the brain. Moreover, these metals stabilize a previously…


Destroying Toxic Amyloid-beta Aggregation with Photoactive Transition Metal Complexes

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease, characterized by memory loss, motor skill loss, and eventually death that currently affects at least 5.8 million Americans.1 This number is projected to more than double in the next 30 years.1 Much effort has gone into determining the exact cause of onset of AD as well as developing strategies to mitigate its symptoms, however, there are currently are no substantial methods of…


Unexpected oxygen tolerance in an efficient hydrogen-producing [FeFe] hydrogenase from Clostridium beijerinckii

[FeFe] hydrogenases catalyze reversible hydrogen evolution at rates as high as 10,000 turnovers per second. This exceptional catalytic ability is very attractive for the use of hydrogenases in renewable energy applications and biohydrogen production. Unfortunately, enzymes of this class are known to degrade irreversibly upon exposure to small  amounts of oxygen, presenting major roadblocks for study and implementation in practical or…
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