T Don Tilley
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Chemistry
How can chemists build new carbon-based molecules and silicon-metal compounds whose structures and bonding give them unusual electronic, optical or catalytic behavior? Two projects address this.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
nanocarbons
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
graphene
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Develop high-yield [2+2+n] cycloaddition reactions that add several fused aromatic rings in one step, giving scalable access to large, tailored polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).
- Synthesize PAHs containing antiaromatic rings to study radical-like character and ways to manipulate electron spin states, which are relevant to quantum information science.
- Prepare expanded helical, graphene-like PAHs and study their host-guest chemistry and chiroptical properties, meaning how these twisted molecules interact with polarized light.
- Use supramolecular assembly and dynamic covalent chemistry, which relies on reversible bonds, to build entangled and knotted nanocarbons and to orient nanocarbon units in space.
- Expand understanding of metal silylene complexes, which contain a metal=silicon double bond, and how they form and react.
- Establish principles for how molecular silicides, compounds with a metal=silicon=metal core, form and transform, as soluble models of industrial solid silicide catalysts.
- Compare metal multiple bonds to germanium, tin and lead with those to silicon to uncover periodic trends across group 14 elements.
More about the research
One designs large carbon frameworks that act like small pieces of graphene, a single sheet of carbon atoms known for its strength and electronic properties. The other explores rarely studied compounds in which silicon is bonded to transition metals, a kind of chemistry behind silicones, adhesives and semiconductors. Both use synthetic chemistry to create molecules that do not yet exist and then study how they behave.
Why it matters
New ways to build graphene-like molecules with controlled shapes, spin and light response could eventually inform materials for organic electronics, thin-film devices and quantum information science. Understanding how metals bond to and react with silicon could help chemists design better processes for making silicon compounds used in silicone polymers, adhesives, lubricants and semiconductors, including the industrial direct process that relies on solid metal silicides.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Frieder Jaekle
Rutgers University-Newark, NJ·Chemistry
Attach multiple boron-nitrogen Lewis pairs to acenes, flat molecules of fused carbon rings, and measure how extending the ring system changes their electronic structure and their absorption and emission of light.
Virginia Montiel-Palma
Mississippi State University, MS·Chemistry·Early-career
Design heterobimetallic complexes combining a late transition metal with a group-13 metal that bind nitrogen-containing aromatic compounds and cleave their carbon–nitrogen bonds at low hydrogen pressure.
Matthew Whited
Carleton College, MN·Chemistry
Develop late-metal complexes with metal–silicon single and multiple bonds that transfer reactive nitrene and carbene groups (short-lived nitrogen and carbon fragments) onto organic substrates.
The school
University of California-Berkeley: 46 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 825 research doctorates a year.
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