The research interests of this group focus on organometallic chemistry and its relationship to homogeneous catalysis. Work in progress includes:
Isomerisation reactions in the solid state
Organometallic chemistry in the melt phase
Development of ligand size measurement techniques
Chemistry of organobi- and trimetallic compounds
Characterisation of three-centre bonded transition metal complexes
Studies of polarisability effects
Green chemistry has become a topical area in chemistry. Various procedures to achieve this aim via atom economy, safer reagents etc are being pursued worldwide. One obvious method is to perform reactions in the absence of solvents and this is the approach adopted in studies in our group. Simple reactions have been chosen for study to determine fundamental aspects of the reaction procedure. Reactions are being studies in the solid state (in collaboration with our X-ray crystallography group) and include ligand isomerisation reactions and gas-uptake studies. Reactions in the melt include substitution and migration/insertion reactions. The metals investigated typically contain Mn, Re, Mo and W (e.g. CpMo(CO)3Me and related complexes)
The typical procedure to evaluate the effect of ligand size in a reaction is via measurement of a Tolman cone angle. In our studies we have both undertaken an evaluation of the accuracy of the cone angles and the development of the solid angle measure of ligand size. The chemistry which occurs at a single transition metal centre can be transformed in various ways by the presence of a second or third metal atom. A knowledge of the influence of one metal upon the properties of another is potentially valuable in the design of complexes tailored to promote specific classes of reactions.
Three-centre bonded transition metal complexes are of interest as intermediates in numerous metal-catalysed reactions and also in their own right as examples of how a ? bond can bind to a metal, an interaction historically considered to be most unlikely. Polarisability effects underlie many aspects of transition metal chemistry but their role is infrequently acknowledged, largely because the framework within which they can be described is poorly developed.
Research Focus
