Functional Materials: Potential and Promise

The progress in solving some of the major environmental and technological problems facing industry and society hinges on the advancement in making high-performance materials with desirable properties and functions. A better understanding of the fundamental structure-property relationships at the molecular level is needed for the rational design and synthesis of such materials. This difficult problem has attracted considerable attention in recent years, fueled by the widespread need of efficient materials for applications in such areas as catalysis, sensors, energy, environment, and health.

Transition metal oxide clusters or polyoxometalates (POM) and their derivatives provide attractive building blocks for the design and synthesis of functional materials. The structures of these material can be varied systematically and their properties, which can be studied through a variety of physic-chemical techniques, could be rationalized in terms of their constituents at the molecular level. The control of the building blocks can result in enhanced and/or novel properties. This talk will highlight some of the developments in this area with an emphasis on a new class of materials developed in my labs and their catalytic and gas sensing properties.