Redox Active Inorganic Materials from Fullerene and Metal Cluster Building Blocks

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This grant in the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Program funds the research of Professor Alan L. Balch of the University of California at Davis. The oxidation of fullerenes to mono-oxo species will be studied and the oxidized species will used to form electropolymerized thin films, whose reactive and conductive properties will be studied. A family of flat triangular gold(I) complexes, which exhibit remarkable solvoluminescence properties, and analogs with Ag(I), Hg(II) and Tl(I) will be used to construct supramolecular species. The possibility of electron transfer through columns of these triangular clusters will be tested by examining their photoconductive properties. The possibility of charge-transfer complexes forming between the gold clusters (electron donors) and fullerenes (electron acceptors) will be probed. Co-crystallization of fullerenes with porphyrins has already yielded an interesting class of compounds in which the fullerene nests in the porphyrin. This project is concerned with new inorganic materials that exhibit novel redox activity or luminescence. Fullerenes and triangular gold(I) complexes will be used as precursors for constructing the new materials, such as supramolecular arrays and molecular co-crystals. Fullerene films will be explored as new highly conductive materials. A new form of luminescence called solvoluminescence, which is light emitted upon the dissolution of a previously irradiated substance, will be studied. The hypothesis that this results from a long range separation of an electron from its original site in a column of triangular gold units will be tested. Understanding such charge separations is fundamental to our understanding of natural energy storage and transduction devices and developing new materials along these lines. Information gained from either fullerene or triangular gold precursor classes will have an impact on how the other class is developed and their combination may lead to entirely new materials. Porphyrin complexes that can wrap partially around fullerenes will be used to develop new ways of chromatographically separating fullerene molecules according to their various shapes, which may make unusual fullerenes more available for development.