Recent Publications

Congratulations to Alec and Oskar for a recent double feature of publications on our ongoing project looking at inner-sphere hydrogen bonding in coordination compounds with fused heterocyclic ligands. First up was this paper in an issue of the Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society dedicated to Prof Vukadin Leovac’s 80th Birthday, which presented Alec’s MChem work on 7-azaindole derived Schiff base ligands, which Oskar helped to finish off during summer. This was shortly followed by this paper in CrystEngComm, presenting work done by Oskar during his summer project on lanthanide complexes of 7-azaindole-N-oxide, with the assistance of Keele FNS technician Leanne Jones. Well done to all involved in these two studies!

Recent Updates

Congratulations again to Dr Vali Slyusarchuk who successfully defended her viva in November, with external examiner Dr Tim Easun and internal examiner Dr Richard Darton. Vali has since moved on to the University of Strathclyde for a postdoctoral research position.

(L-R) Tim, Chris, Vali and Richard after Vali’s thesis defence

Well done also to Oskar, who completed a summer project in the group in summer 2022 and has since returned for an MChem project, who had his first publication accepted in CrystEngComm recently. This work highlights a key research area in the group, exploring fused nitrogen heterocycles and their tendencies to form air and moisture-stable MOFs for effective carbon dioxide capture.

Well Done Vali

Congratulations to Vali who submitted her PhD thesis recently and started a new job as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Strathclyde this month, working with Dr Gavin Craig and Prof Ashleigh Fletcher. Vali’s most recent paper was also just accepted in the Journal of Coordination Chemistry, in collaboration with former 3rd year project student Barnaby O’Brien, investigating the crystal packing effects of piperidine and morpholine substituents in coordination compounds. Great work Vali and best of luck for the future!

Vali with her finished PhD thesis in front of the Lennard-Jones building at Keele

Group visit to Loughborough for MASC ECR Meeting

Chris, Vali and Oskar at the MASC ECR meeting

Vali, Oskar and Chris attended the RSC Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry interest group Early Career meeting at Loughborough University recently. Vali presented a talk on her silver coordination cage work, while Oskar (who recently joined the group as a summer research student) enjoyed his first scientific conference experience.

June passes her PhD viva

Well done to June Lovitt from the Gunnlaugsson group at Trinity College Dublin and co-supervised at Keele, who passed her PhD viva yesterday. As part of her project June spent a summer in the lab at Keele working on cyclohexane-derived MOF materials. Her PhD thesis entitled Development of Supramolecular Coordination Materials Using Naphthalimide and 2,6-bis(triazol-4-yl)pyridine Motifs was examined by Dr Darren Bradshaw from Southampton University and Prof. Yurii Gun’ko from TCD. Congratulations Dr Lovitt!

Research Visitors from Novi Sad

Nikola, Chris and Branko outside the Lennard-Jones Laboratories at Keele

This month at Keele we hosted Nikola Radnovic and Dr Branko Kordić from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia for a research trip as part of the joint Schiff base MOFs project, for which Nikola had also previously visited for a research placement at Keele in 2021. Both Nikola and Branko got some exciting work done while they were here and we are excited to see how the project continues to develop!

Paper in Dalton Transactions

Well done to RSC Summer Bursary recipient Amelia and former MChem students Rohan and Jack who recently had a paper published on their fused pyrazolylpyridine work in Dalton Transactions. This work builds on Rohan and Jack‘s previous papers from their MChem projects and reports new fused heterocyclic ligands for stable MOFs, and examines the differences in stability constants in the zinc(II) complexes of four isomeric chelating pyridylpyrazole ligands.

New Article in CrystEngComm

Well done to Vali whose work on aliphatic MOFs derived from Fecht’s acid was recently accepted in CrystEngComm. The work explores a spirocyclic dicarboxylate ligand containing two cyclobutane rings linked by a spiro carbon, giving a linear twisted bridging geometry. The resulting MOFs from zinc(II) and ytterbium(III) show good thermal stability and a reduction in framework-framework interactions when compared to the more common aromatic analogues.

This article was also featured as the front cover of CrystEngComm for Issue 3 of 2022

Vali presents at 1st WISC Workshop

Well done to Vali who gave an oral presentation on her work with aliphatic MOFs at the 1st Women in Supramolecular Chemistry (WISC) Workshop meeting this week. The meeting was a 3-day hybrid event held in Cagliari, Sardinia and online via Zoom with over 250 delegates registered, covering all aspects of supramolecular chemistry research and techniques. Vali discussed some work recently submitted for publication which we hope to share more details on shortly.