Lamellar Inorganic Solids as Building Blocks for Functional Materials

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This Research award in the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry program supports work by Professor Thomas Mallouk at The Pennsylvania State University to carry out fundamental studies on the synthesis, reaction chemistry, and physical properties of new layered metal oxides. This class of inorganic materials lends itself to rational design because of the availability of intercalation, ion-exchange, and exfoliation/re-stacking reactions. Oriented attachment reactions of oxide nanosheets will be developed to realize three-dimensionally bonded solids with tailored magnetic and electronic properties. New topochemical reactions will be used to introduce dopants and defects, which will modulate the electronic and protonic conductivity of layered solids and thin film superlattices derived from them. Oriented particle membranes, which are of interest as solid electrolytes for intermediate temperature fuel cells, will be made by combining the magnetic orientation of nano- and microcrystals with electrophoretic assembly. This research will be coupled to an outreach effort that provides high school students from under-represented groups with hands-on experience in nanomaterials chemistry through an Upward Bound Math and Science summer program. The project will continue to develop guided-inquiry capstone projects for the materials- and environmentally-focused sections of the general chemistry laboratory at Penn State, and will contribute to K-12 science outreach efforts in local schools. Layered metal oxides are a class of inorganic solids with unique ferroelectric, magnetic, superconducting, and catalytic properties. The elaboration of their chemistry is important to realizing new functional materials that combine, for example, ferroelectricity and magnetism, and to exploiting their reactivity for applications in catalysis and energy conversion.