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I have finally finished my PhD!!!!
The general topic of my thesis is covered
here, with more detailed information on subsequent pages.
I am now working as a post-doctoral fellow in the research group of Dr. H. Lang
in the tweezer chemistry.
My thesis work, and the work that I am currently doing, is centred on the
reactivity of organometallic complexes containing multiple metal centres.
Of course, the first question that most people ask
when they look at this is "Why bother?" Basically,
organometallic compounds undergo some fascinating and useful reactions.
They can stabilize unstable compounds long enough to allow them
to undergo desired reactions; they can activate normally unreactive
substrates; and they can catalyze various organic reactions so
as to make valuable compounds (drugs, antibiotics, fuels, etc.)
available more economically. Even if a certain compound does
not do these things very well, they can be used to model these
reactions, which will help us understand the reactions that do
work well (which will hopefully lead to improvements in these
processes).
Binuclear compounds are particularly interesting
(to us, anyway), since the presence of two metals in close proximity
allows for the possibility of metal-metal cooperation, allowing
reactions normally forbidden in mononuclear systems. In metals,
as in heads, two is better than one. Many chemists make clusters
of metal atoms, since the more metals you have, the closer you
are to heterogeneous systems (which do some wonderful things,
but are very poorly understood). Trouble is, the more metals
you have, the harder it is to figure out what is going on. So,
I like to stick to only two metals for now.