We are studying compounds in which a single atom of carbon is held between two metal centres LnM=C=MLn. In most cases the M=C=M spine is linear but we have recently isolated the first examples where the carbon is bent and displays nucleophilic character.

This project will involve a reasonable amount of organic synthesis, as well as some host-guest binding studies and potentially some X-ray crystallography.

We hope that these will give interesting catalytic properties as we will be able to incorporate coordinatively unsaturated metal ions next to a well-defined 3D binding pocket. This will be studied in collaboration with the Colebatch group.

This project involves designing and developing new recognition motifs to assemble H-bonded frameworks, and using different interactions such as halogen bonding and chalcogen bonding to prepare frameworks.

We aim to develop these as molecular machines, switching between forms to turn on or off their capacity to interact, sense, and/or catalytically transform target molecules.

We have projects in developing systems from them towards the following goals: 1. Photophysical applications: arranging photophysically active groups close in space for FRET, donor-acceptor, or upconversion events 2. Binding and transport of anions and more...