Dr. Lori A. Vermeulen, Chemistry Department, Southern Illinois University, is supported under a Research Planning Grant for Women Scientists and Engineers by the Inorganic, Bioinorganic, and Organometallic Chemistry Program of the Chemistry Division for the study of supramolecular materials. A new electrochemical reduction of silicon and germanium chlorides will be developed as a route to the preparation of silicon and germanium based polymers. This technique will permit the preparation of polymers with well defined cross linking and with controlled structural and photophysical properties. Additionally, layered metal phosphonate thin films with organized donor/acceptor multilayers will be prepared and studied as potential solar energy conversion and storage devices. The development of new materials for energy storage and conversion systems, non-linear optical devices, and molecular electronic devices demands substances in which the constituent atoms are well defined and ordered in specific ways. In this project new techniques will be devised for synthesizing polymers in which chains of silicon and/or germanium atoms form specific three dimensional networks. Further, techniques of preparing thin films composed of layers of metal and non-metal atoms will be developed. Both of these new materials will have important energy conversion or optical properties.
