Research Projects

Research in our group focuses on constructing molecules and materials for use in energy and environmentally minded applications such as solar energy harvesting, energy storage and catalysis. Taking our inspiration from Nature and from the broader history of molecular design, we are interested in making molecules that allow us to understand on a deeper level new interactions between ligands and metals, to access unique and useful molecular properties. We then apply these findings to facilitate challenging transformations and develop new applications of techniques such as electrochemistry in energy storage and organic synthesis, using abundant elements. Members of the our team develop expertise in air/moisture sensitive manipulations using glove-box and Schlenk techniques in advanced chemical synthesis, ligand design and coordination chemistry, and characterization techniques including NMR spectroscopy, single-crystal X-Ray diffraction, and electrochemistry. We also enjoy a good Oxford comma every now and then.

For more information on some of our on-going projects, please check out our recent publications:

(1) Designing extended N-heterocyclic ligands for new emissive materials
      See representative publications #31, 38, 42, 53, 56, 75, 76, 86, 87, 88 or 94.... or just read our review article (#77)

(2) Panchromatic absorption and excited state tuning in abundant transition metal coordination complexes
      See representative publications #43, 59, 61, 62, 70, 71, 72, 73, 81 or 92.

(3) Ligand designs for catalysis and novel chemotherapeutics
      See representative publications #48, 49, 51, 58, 69, 82 or 89.
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(4) Electrochemical hydrogenation using carbon electrodes:
      See representative publications #24, 30, 60 or 95.

(4) Redox-active ligands: flow batteries and novel electronic structures
      See representative publications #29, 50 or 54.

For further details, please contact us.

Infrastructure

Our synthetic and characterization infrastructure includes standard Schlenk glassware and two MBraun gloveboxes complete with freezers and cold-wells for inert-atmosphere chemistry, potentiostats for electrochemistry and pressure equipment. We also have a CFI-funded Bruker D8 QUEST ECO X-ray diffractometer and Oxford 800 Series Cryostream for single-crystal X-ray crystallography, as well as a state-of-the-art chemical vapour deposition (CVD) set-up for construction of high fidelity silicon microwire arrays, infrastructure for microwire functionalization and a probe station for electrical characterization. In addition, as members of the Manitoba Institute for Materials (MIM), we have access to a whole host of fantastic imaging, characterization and fabrication equipment. For information about external users and collaborations, please get in touch!

         

With special thanks to the following organizations for funding...