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Australia, Women and Rare Earth Chemistry

Abstract

The RACI Margaret Sheil Leadership Award was established to honour the trail-blazing contributions of Professor Margaret Sheil AO, the first Australian female Professor of Chemistry.  Through numerous and varied leadership roles, Margaret has worked tirelessly to progress the participation, success and recognition of women in chemistry, and science and engineering more generally.

In this lecture I will present my own journey as a woman in chemistry and discuss some of the challenges that remain for the full participation of women in science.  I received this award largely in recognition of the efforts that I have made to mentor younger women in chemistry, so I am delighted to have the opportunity to present some exciting research discoveries in the area of rare earth chemistry from outstanding women researchers in my research group:  Dr Elodie Rousset and Dr Moya Hay. 

Rare earth metals are increasingly important for a range of technological applications that make use of their unique electronic, magnetic and optical properties, as well as their chemical reactivity.  The term "rare earth" is a misnomer for these relatively abundant metals and Australia is the sixth largest source of rare earth minerals.   We are interested in the fundamental chemistry of the electronic structure and resulting optical and magnetic properties of complexes of rare earth metal ions. One area of particular emphasis is metal- and ligand-based redox activity.¹  As part of this investigation we have discovered novel charge-transfer properties and approaches to chemically tuning the rare earth metal redox potential and optical properties.^2–4   An ultimate aim of this work is to use the insights gained to develop a new class of switchable molecular materials based on rare earth metals with a view to new applications in sensing, displays, optics and electronics for these critical Australian commodities.

References

(1)       Hay, M. A.; Boskovic, C. "Lanthanoid Complexes as Molecular Materials: The Redox Approach". Chem. - A Eur. J. 2021, 1–31.

(2)       Rousset, E.; Gable, R. W.; Starikova, A.; Boskovic, C. "Tetrahalocatecholate Rare Earth Complexes: Dinuclear Motifs with Intramolecular RE···XC(Ar) Interactions". Cryst. Growth Des. 2020, 20, 3396–3405.

(3)       Rousset, E.; Piccardo, M.; Gable, R. W.; Massi, M.; Sorace, L.; Soncini, A.; Boskovic, C. "Elucidation of LMCT Excited States for Lanthanoid Complexes: A Theoretical and Solid-State Experimental Framework". Inorg. Chem. 2022, 61, 14004–14018.

(4)       Hay, M. A.; Gable, R. W.; Boskovic, C. "Modulating the Electronic Properties of Divalent Lanthanoid Complexes with Subtle Ligand Tuning". Dalton Trans. 2023, 52, 3315–3324.