Research
Primary Areas of Interest
Catalysis
We have developed a series of new ligands for metal catalyst supports based on heterocycles that provide options for specially tailored more efficient reactions taking advantage of bioessential or earth abundant metals like copper, as opposed to more expensive or toxic metals like chromium or rhodium.
Actinide Coordination
Given that the remediation of nuclear fuel wastes is made more difficult based on gaps that remain in our understanding of actinide chemistry, we investigate lanthanide and actinide complexes featuring soft-donor atoms (i.e., nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorous) to probe the differences in the chemistry of the f-elements.
Lanthanides
Because of their similar ionic size and chemistry, separations and purifications of the lanthanides are quite challenging. Lanthanide complexes can give us unique comparisons to the actinides and can allow us to better understand the nature of the f- orbitals. In doing so, we can prepare new unique complexes with their own tunable emissions properties.