This award is made in the Materials Chemistry and Chemical Processing Initiative in support of the collaborative research of Professors Callstrom and McCreery at Ohio State University. Joint funding is provided by the Divisions of Chemistry, Materials Research, and Chemical and Thermal Systems. The thrust of the research is the development of new synthetic routes to doped glassy carbon materials and an investigation of their properties. These engineered materials are likely to find use as catalytic electrodes. Doped glassy carbon materials will be prepared at low temperatures by thermal decomposition of poly(aryl- diacetylenes) that are amenable to orientation in order to control the structure of the resultant carbon materials. Transition metals with catalytic activity towards hydrogenation, dioxygen reduction and methanol oxidation will be covalently bound to the diacetylene polymers, prior to decomposition to specifically control their concentration and activity in the glassy carbon materials.
