Burjor Captain - Associate Professor
Research Interests: Metal Cluster Chemistry, Organometallic Synthesis, Catalysis, X-ray Crystallography
We are interested in designing and exploring the chemistry of transition metal complexes containing sterically encumbered ligands derived from main group elements. The transition metals of interest are those belonging to the Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, and Cu triads. Our work will make available new unsaturated heteronuclear complexes for the purpose of hydrogen and small molecule activation, and homogeneous catalysis. Transition metal complexes have and always will play the crucial part in the chemistry of hydrogen, and catalytic hydrogenations. Our work will also shed light on the mechanistic pathways of hydrogen/small molecule addition and elimination. We are also interested in using our metal cluster complexes as molecular precursors to heterogeneous catalysts and potential industrial catalysts. Students will learn synthetic organometallic chemistry, and will use various methods such as single crystal X-ray crystallography, fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and electron microscopy.
