Professor Reed of the University of Southern California will conduct studies on synthetic inorganic chemistry with funding from the Inorganic, Bioinorganic, and Organometallic program. He will investigate the coordination chemistry of weakly coordinating anions, such as BC11H12- and its derivatives. These anions should allow the preparation of highly-reactive cationic species, including the silicenium cation and transition-metal complexes of very weak donors, such as xenon and hydrocarbons. He will also develop a "magnetochemical series", by investigating the nature of spin-admixed intermediate spin state somplexes of the type Fe(III)Y(porphyrin). A third area of investigation will be in fulleride chemistry, where he will examine species such as C60n-, C70n-, and BC59-. %%% Research in synthetic inorganic chemistry presents many opportunities. Professor Reed of USC will investigate several sub-areas, with a focus of large anions that have a very low tendency to bind to cations. This property will allow unusual cations to be synthesized, cations that would normally be strongly bound to whatever anions were available. Potential applications of such unusual cations would be in catalysis and the development of new reagents for synthesis of organic substances. Additional studies will focus on new ways to describe the bonding between metal cations and other atomic groups.
