This CAREER award in the Inorganic, Bioinorganic, and Organometallic Chemistry Program supports research and education on metal-based catalysts on silicon surfaces by Dr. Jillian M. Buriak of the Chemistry Department, Purdue University. The goal of the research is to establish a new way of modulating the electronic properties of catalysts to increase their selectivity. Metal complexes will be bound to semiconducting porous silicon surfaces through a conjugated linking ligand. A potential applied to the silicon will then be varied to effectively adjust the electronic properties of the reactive metal site. Many powerful surface techniques will be used to characterize the attached complexes: FTIR, DRIFTS, ATR-IR, TOF-SIMS, XPS, and solid state NMR.
Compounds acting as catalysts will be attached to a silicon surface and the electronic properties will be modulated to improve their selectivity, thereby improving reactions and minimizing undesirable by-products. Undergraduate students will participate in the research, and special efforts will be made to improve undergraduate inorganic courses by incorporating computers and molecular modeling into the classroom experience.
