9312413 Schrock This renewal award is made in the Advanced Materials and Processing Program in support of the collaborative research of Professors Schrock, Cohen and Silbey at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Support is provided by The Divisions of Chemistry and Materials Research. The focus of the research is the synthesis of semiconductor clusters of lead and cadmium sulfides of unusual shape, size and distribution. The approach will be to synthesize metal carboxylate-containing block copolymers of a particular morphology and convert them into metal sulfide clusters by treatment with hydrogen sulfide. New metal-containing monomers and catalysts will be synthesized for the development of new semiconductor-precursor polymers. More general approaches to semiconductor cluster synthesis including aqueous methods will be explored. In concert with experiments, the application of theoretical methods to study the optical absorption, fluoresence and photoelectron spectra of semiconductor crystallites as a function of their size, shape and surface, will be developed. %%% Careful control of the size and shape of semiconductor clusters will permit the synthesis of advanced materials with predictable and controllable electronic and optical properties. ***
