9600174 Nicolaides This award supports a 12 month Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Postdoctoral Fellowship for Dr. Athanassios Nicolaides at the Chemistry Department for Materials, Mie University, Mie, Japan. Dr. Nicolaides will work with Dr. Hideo Tomioka, Professor of Engineering, on a research project entitled, "Computational Studies of Novel Carbenes and Nitrenes." The proposed research focuses on an effort to design, synthesize, and characterize novel compounds containing carbenic and/or nitrenic centers linked by strong ferromagnetic coupling units. In contrast to normal organic compounds, carbenes and nitrenes interact strongly with magnetic fields, making them promising building blocks for the synthesis of organic materials with magnetic properties comparable to or even better than those of metals. The proposed research aims at understanding how the life-time of such reactive species can be extended, while both preserving their desirable magnetic properties and understanding how such properties can be improved. Although this is a relatively new topic of research, the compounds being tested are highly reactive and, as such, are of a high scientific and technological significance. ***
