This U.S.-Mexico award will support Professor Richard Ernst of the University of Utah in a research collaboration with Professor M. Angeles Paz-Sandoval of the Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados del I.P.N. (CINVESTAV) in Mexico City. The purpose of the research is to study the incorporation of oxygen and nitrogen containing pentadienyl ligands into transition metal complexes. This award will allow the expansion of a current domestic effort studying general pentadienyl ligands to the very promising oxygen and nitrogen containing analogues. The Mexican side will focus primarily on the preparation of the new ligands, and incorporation of these into metal complexes, while in Utah additional efforts will be made to incorporate these ligands into other metal complexes, to study potentially useful reaction chemistry, and to study the natures of these compounds by a variety of physical methods, including single crystal x-ray diffraction. As metal pentadienyl compounds have already proven very useful in metal film depositions and reaction chemistry, it is expected that similar practical applications will develop from the oxygen and nitrogen containing analogues.
