With this New award the Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry Program supports the work of Dr. Mark S. Meier, and his collaborators Drs. H. Peter Spielmann and Robert C. Haddon in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky. The research aims to understand the reactivity of fullerene and its derivatives - using a combination of synthesis, 13C NMR of isotopically enriched compounds, and computational methods - to find correlations between site reactivity and NMR parameters for individual carbon atoms.
The research will help to provide a basic theoretical understanding of the reactivity of an important class of organic compounds called fullerenes, so named because the basic building block of 60 carbon atoms has the same structure as the geodesic domes designed by the architect Buckminster Fuller. Compounds of this type are being investigated by many scientists for potential applications ranging from electronic materials and sensors to pharmaceuticals. The work will provide excellent training for the students involved in the areas of organic synthesis, theory, and spectroscopy.
