Dr. Paul R. Sharp, Department of Chemistry, University of Missouri at Columbia, is supported by the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry program of the Division of Chemistry, National Science Foundation, for his work on the organometallic chemistry at the edge of polycyclic aromatic carbon compounds. Specifically, the chemistry of polycyclic aromatic yne and metallacycle complexes will be developed as a means to construct carbon nanotubes by a step-growth approach based on permetalated naphthalenes, coronenes, and coroannulenes.
Carbon nanotubes will be constructed by special design at the molecular level. These nanotubes will provide other researchers opportunities to explore novel electronic properties of one-dimensional conducting systems. They will also find applications in such areas as nanoscale electronic devices, field emitters, hydrogen storage, and non-linear optics. Graduate students and post-doctoral associates will receive enviable training from the molecular scale chemistry to the nanoscale dimension.
