The 20th annual Symposium will be held on Thursday, April 23, 2009.

Chromium-tetrone Complexes as Novel Magnetic Materials
Norris 100, 2:00 PM

Elizabeth  Reznikov,   '09 12
   Major: Chemistry
   Hometown: Brighton, MI

Sponsor(s): Vanessa McCaffrey
Support: FURSCA-Orpha Leiter Irwin Research Fellowship in Pre-Medicine

Abstract: 
We will present the results of work towards synthesizing magnetic materials using a “metal-organic radical” approach. In this project we use novel organic ligands, termed “tetrones.” The tetrone is a rationally designed ligand based on the dimethylenecylclobutadiene diradical (DMCB). The carbon-centered radicals of DMCB have been replaced with quinone moieties for metal binding sites. The quinones moities can be reduced to semiquinones by zero-valent metals. Calculations show thatthese ligands should behave as ferromagnetic couplers when coordinated to metals. First, CrCl2 was used to reduce the tetrone in the presence of a reduced salen ligand to allow us to study the metal-ligand interaction without the complication of long range interactions. The second method uses metal carbonyl complexes as the reductant to form multi-dimensional networks. We will be presenting prelimary results on the structural and electronic characteristics of the resulting compounds.

 12