Tags: Inorganic Seminar


Framework materials for efficient harvest, conversion and transport of solar and electrochemical energy

The ability to design and impose specific molecular traits for targeted properties in inorganic solid-state materials is one of the many challenges in materials science. In our research, we focus our efforts in the design of organic and inorganic molecular building blocks with well-defined properties to be incorporated in solid-state materials in the form of metal-organic and covalent-organic frameworks (MOFs and COFs, respectively). These…


Turning Cartoons into Reality: Retrosynthetic Design Tools for Complex Inorganic Nanostructures

When approaching the synthesis of a material that requires rigorous control over multiple features (e.g. composition, crystal structure, shape, size), it is helpful to understand how the material forms, including how each variable influences its formation. Realistically, though, this is not always possible, particularly for inorganic solids that form at high temperatures and colloidal nanoparticles that form in solution. We have been studying…


Negative thermal expansion and other anomalous properties of metal fluorides with ReO3-related structures

Thermal expansion is a phenomenon that chemists do not often consider, and yet it is an important material’s characteristic for many applications. For example, Pyrex is used for laboratory glassware because it has a close to zero thermal expansion coefficient. This makes the glassware resistant to failure when subject to rapid temperature changes. While most materials expand on heating, there are materials that shrink when heated and this…


Transition Metal Chalcogenides for Electronics Applications

Transition metal chalcogenides are a class of van der Waals materials displaying interesting electronic properties that depend on both the transition metal and the chalcogenide involved as well as the observed polymorph. Transition metal dichalcogenides, MX2, are quasi-2D materials that can vary electronically from semiconductors to metallic-like conductors, with some displaying superconductivity and charge density wave behaviors. MX2 materials…


Synthesis and Speciation-Dependent Properties of a Multimetallic Model Complex of NiSOD that Exhibits Unique H-Bonding

Superoxide (O2•‒) is a cytotoxic byproduct of aerobic metabolism. As a result, all aerobic organisms possess superoxide dismutases (SODs) to catalyze the disproportionation of O2•‒ into hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and oxygen (O2) via alternate oxidation and reduction of their respective catalytic metal centers. In 1996, a new class of SOD was isolated from Streptomyces soil bacteria containing Ni (NiSOD) in an unusual, mixed N/S coordination sphere…


Nitrogenase M-Cluster Assembly: Tracing the ‘9th Sulfur’ of the Nitrogenase Cofactor via a Semi-Synthetic Approach

The M-cluster is the active site of nitrogenase that contains an 8Fe-core assembled via coupling and rearrangement of two [Fe4S4] clusters concomitant with the insertion of an interstitial carbon and a ‘9th sulfur’. Combining synthetic [Fe4S4] clusters with an assembly protein template, we show that sulfite gives rise to the ‘9th sulfur’ that is incorporated in the catalytically important belt region of the cofactor after the radical SAM-…


Flavin Hydroperoxide: New tricks from an old dog

Since its discovery, in the early 1930s, the chemistry of riboflavin has been studied in great detail. It is therefore surprising that several new flavin-mediated reactions have been discovered over the past few years. My lecture will focus on three reactions where riboflavin is used as a substrate in a biosynthetic pathway. These reactions are involved in riboflavin catabolism, Vitamin B12 biosynthesis and roseoflavin biosynthesis.  


Unraveling Heme Metabolism in Malaria Parasites

Malaria remains a devastating infectious disease, with symptoms caused by Plasmodium parasite invasion of erythrocytes. During blood-stage infection, parasites import and digest up to 80% of host cell hemoglobin. This massive catabolic process liberates vast amounts of heme, which parasites detoxify by sequestering it into crystalline hemozoin within an acidic digestive vacuole. Eukaryotic Plasmodium parasites also require heme as a metabolic…
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