This award is made in the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry Program to Clemson University to support the research of Dr. Gregory Robinson. Dr. Robinson's research deals with the design, synthesis, structure and reactivity of organoaluminum:amine complexes and provides needed structural data on coordination of main group elements. The interactions of organoaluminum moieties with macrocyclic amines, multidentate open-chain amines and nitrogen heterocycles will be investigated. Preliminary results indicate that these systems contain aluminum centers in unusual trigonal bipyramidal, square pyramidal and octahedral coordination environments. The coordination of the aluminum atom(s) will be determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction and aluminum-27 NMR. The thermal behavior of these unusual compounds and their feasibility to function as single-source molecular precursors for ceramic materials will be investigated. %%% Organoaluminum chemistry is an important but rather neglected area of organometallic chemistry. In addition to filling in serious gaps in our knowledge of aluminum chemistry, the project will result in the synthesis of new organoaluminum compounds which will be of potential value as precursors for the preparation of ceramic materials such as aluminum nitride.
