This renewal team award made to Michigan State University by the Advanced Materials Program in the Division of Chemistry is to study oxide and non-oxide mesoporous structured materials. With this award, Professor Pinnavaia and a team of other senior scientists with expertise in complementary research activities in synthetic inorganic chemistry, theoretical and experimental condensed matter physics, structural modeling and electronic structure calculations, and charge transport and thermal transport characterization will study the following: the oxide mesostructured materials; aluminosilicate mesostructure assembly from zeolite seeds and fragments with intrinsic acidic and hydrothermal stabilities; preparation of organofunctional mesostructures, wherein more than half of the framework metal atom centers are linked to accessible and reactive organic groups; mesostructure carbon replication for optically active monoliths using phase transfer assembly techniques with mesostructured silica as templates; and related experimental and theoretical studies for the assembly mechanisms and to elucidate the fundamental relationships between structure and performance properties of disordered oxidic mesostructures. This team will also study different chalcogenide mesoporous materials that act as the "inside-out" versions of array of quantum dots, narrow-gap semiconductors, biological iron sulfide clusters; and other electronically active, mesoporous chalcogenide solids with highly ordered pores yielding a variety of new materials with novel shape-selective redox, optical and electrical properties. The synthetic approaches will be complemented by characterization, modeling and theoretical calculations.
With this award, a team of scientists with expertise in synthetic inorganic chemistry, theoretical and experimental condensed matter physics, structural modeling and electronic structure calculations, and charge transport and thermal transport characterization will study oxide and non-oxide mesoporous materials. Active industrial collaborations for potential applications of these materials as catalysts will be part of these research activities. In addition, this highly collaborative effort will bring together materials scientists, chemists, condensed matter physicists and structural and theoretical scientists, and will provide educational and research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, postdoctoral associates and visiting scientists.
