This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The award, as submitted to the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic (IBO) program, supports work by Professor Bryan Eichhorn at the University of Maryland to carry out fundamental studies on the preparation of molecular clusters containing rare-earth atoms (i.e., La, Y, Gd) with direct, covalent metal-metal bonds. As there are no previous examples of such compounds known to date and the development of this chemistry will represent a major breakthrough in inorganic and cluster science, this award is made through the EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) Program. Professor Eichhorn and his group employ a unique, reduced metal halide synthesis device (the Schnockel reactor) to prepare solutions of the rare earth monohalides and dihalides. Sterically-encumbered amido and carboxylato ligands are incorporated to promote the formation of low-nuclearity clusters, i.e., La2 and La4 clusters. Controlled disproportionation reactions at higher temperatures are being used to generate larger "metalloid" clusters with high nuclearity La cores. The targeted f-block elements (i.e., Gd, Nd) are used to produce highly magnetic clusters resulting from direct coupling of f-electrons. Such magnetic nanoclusters provide fundamental insight into the nature of direct metal-metal bonding for rare-earth elements and could be directly applicable as magnetic storage components, magnetic imaging agents, and catalysts for organic transformations.
