introduction
The
inorganic chemistry in the Meyer laboratory bridges
the field of classical coordination chemistry
with fields of supramolecular, organometallic,
and bioinorganic chemistry. The general research
focuses on the organic synthesis of new chelating
ligands and their transition and actinide metal
coordination complexes. These complexes often
exhibit unprecedented coordination modes and unusual
electronic structures and consequently, enhanced
reactivities towards small molecules, such as
organic azides and O2, O3, CO, CO2, NO, N2O etc.
Small molecule activation and atom or group transformation
to functionalize important organic precursor molecules
is envisioned. The coordination chemistry of a
range of early transition metals as well as the
relatively unexplored uranium chemistry is investigated.
A battery of spectroscopic methods such as EPR,
Mössbauer, electronic absorption, and MCD
spectroscopy is applied to study the electronic
properties and reactivities of these new species.
Synthetic chemistry is at the heart of our research
but modern computational methods (geometry optimization
and electronic structure calculation with the
ADF program suite) is applied to elucidate the
electronic structures and origin of reactivity
of our newly synthesized molecules.
In
general, the research in our laboratories allows
for learning a variety of inorganic and organic
synthetic techniques as well as the theory and
application of a large number of spectroscopic
and computational methods. |