PhD position in synthetic inorganic/organometallic chemistry: New reactivity from unusual molecular main group compounds

About the Project

The chemistry of the main group elements has seen some remarkable advances in the past years. A range of highly unusually bonded main group compounds from the s- and p-block of the periodic table has been prepared in recent years that has led to some surprising reactivity being discovered including unusual activation reactions of organic molecules and relatively inert industrially relevant small molecules. Your project will systematically study well-defined molecular main group compounds largely stabilized by sterically demanding ligands and explore their properties and novel reactivity. The PhD research will involve the synthesis and characterization of molecular main group compounds, the design and synthesis of suitable sterically demanding ligand systems, exploratory reactivity studies of new main group compounds, and their application in synthesis and catalysis.

During your project, you will use Schlenk line and glove box techniques for compound handling and various techniques such as multinuclear NMR spectroscopy for compound characterization. The School of Chemistry at the University of St Andrews provides an excellent research infrastructure and operates a wide range of state-of-the-art characterization equipment. Computational studies may be carried out on a new HPC cluster at the University of St Andrews.