Kathryn Preuss
Department of Chemistry, University of Guelph
50 Stone Road East,
Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada
Email: kpreuss@uoguelph.ca
Our team is collaborating with the group of Kathryn Preuss since 2006. Our collaboration has been reinforced in 2008 by Nigel Hearns a former PhD student of Kathryn who joined the M3 team for one year as a postdoc funded by a NSERC (PDF) award.
A few words about Preuss’s work: “Molecular
materials” are crystalline, amorphous or liquid crystalline materials
composed of arrays of molecules, as opposed to solid state materials in
which no identifiable molecular components exist (e.g., ionic solids
such as NaCl.) The bulk material properties arise from the molecular
design, thus molecule-based materials are highly “tunable” using
well-understood synthetic chemical methodology. Designing materials at a
molecular level not only imparts a huge amount of control on a bulk
property but also allows for the incorporation of multiple potentially
desirable properties. Imagine, for example, a paint or coating that can
store digital data. Molecular magnets, molecular conductors, single
molecule magnets (SMMs), organic light emitting diodes (oLEDs) and
molecular switches are examples of molecular materials.
The rational design and
preparatio