Links

New Chemistry

A transition metal borylene

complex stabilized by a non-

carbonyl ligand set: formation

by spontaneous halide loss to

give an extremely short metal-

-boron bond (video).

(work by David Addy)

Aldridge

Collaborations

A number of highly productive academic collaborations have been forged which give the group access to a pool of complementary expertise. These include:

· Prof Cameron Jones (Monash, Australia). Prof Jones and Dr Aldridge were co-founders and directors of the Centre for Fundamental and Applied Main Group Chemistry while at Cardiff University, and have been involved in an externally funded collaboration for >5 years on synthetic and structural aspects of low coordinate/low valent main group and transition metal chemistry. Recent output from this collaboration has been published in Chem. Eur. J (2008, 14, 8477-8480).

· Prof Philip Mountford (Oxford Chemistry). A recently instituted collaboration with Prof Mountford and Prof Jones, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, is aimed at developing the chemistry of early transition metal and lanthanide boryl complexes.

· Dr Ian Fallis (Cardiff). Drs Fallis and Aldridge collaborate on aspects of sensor design and amplification for neutral and anionic analytes. The collaboration has been supported by EPSRC for four and a half years (and continues to be supported) and also involves interaction withe the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), Porton Down. Recent work has featured as cover articles in Inorganic Chemistry and in Dalton Transactions.

· Dr David Willock (Cardiff). A long-standing collaboration with the Willock group has been responsible for access to state-of-the-art DFT techniques for analysing the electronic structure of chemical bonds. The results of quantum chemical calculations of this type continue to be vital in probing metal-ligand interactions in novel systems.

· Prof Eluvathingal Jemmis (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore). A relatively new collaboration with the Jemmis group has allowed the use of DFT methods as a complementary probe to experimental techniques in analysing reaction mechanisms in organometallic systems.

· Prof Gareth Brenton and Dr Bridget Stein (National Mass Spectrometry Service Centre, Swansea University) collaborate on a joint project aimed at developing poly/oligomeric Lewis acids for sensing applications. Vicky Chislett is currently working on this project, which aims to make use of the powerful MALDI mass spectrometry facilities available at the National Centre to characterize key polymeric systems.