Allen Hunter, Department of Chemistry, Youngstown State University, is supported jointly by the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry Program (Division of Chemistry) and the Solid State Chemistry and Polymers Program (Division of Materials Research) for his research in isonitrile-bridged organometallic materials. Rigid rod building blocks,-[-trans-Mo(PR3)4(mu-CN-arene-NC)]-, will be condensed with other monomers or oligomers to produce well-defined one dimensional structures and then linked by central metal atoms/ions to produce star-shaped nanostructured materials. Structural and electronic properties can be finely tuned by varying the building block components. Structure/property relationships will be explored in these materials, particularly the number of arms, the arm length, the degree of conjugation down the arms, and the nature of the metal vertex.
Research at Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) enables undergraduates to gain valuable experience in "hands-on" chemistry and materials science. This project also involves local high school teachers in research. In addition to these educational benefits, the organometallic polymers have potential applications in materials science.
