9321196 Doherty Univ. of Calif. - Irvine Dr. Nancy M. Doherty, Chemistry Department, University of California Irvine, is supported by the Inorganic, Bioinorganic, and Organometallic Chemistry Program to develop the synthetic chemistry needed to prepare transition-metal-containing polymers. Polymers containing an early transition metals linked through nitrido bridges will be prepared by the ring opening of cyclic early transition metal nitride complexes. Analogous polymers containing later transition metals will be constructed using complexes containing N-M-N linkages as building blocks. Inorganic polymers are an important class of materials possessing a range of properties and with a variety of potential as well as actual applications. However, in spite of a wealth of polymeric systems which can be imagined, this field is very underdeveloped. The focus of this project is the development of methods to prepare polymers which incorporate transition metals into a polymer chain. These materials promise to have a broad range of mechanical, electrical, optical, and magnetic properties.
