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October 2019

Archives for October 2019

2019 National Chemistry Week

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Last Thursday, October 17, about 60 people of all ages were in 555 Buehler Hall at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Department of Chemistry for Al Hazari’s 29th Annual “Magic of Chemistry Show.” This year’s theme was “Marvelous Metals!”

The audience came from all over the East Tennessee area. In attendance were local American Chemical Society members, faculty and staff members, area K-16 students and teachers. Emeritus Professor Bob Compton and his family attended the show.

Hazari had help from Avery Blockmon, third year grad student, and John Hymel, senior undergraduate student. The department’s professor Ben Xue was a “guest star” lit up the evening with a fiery natural gas – soap bubble demonstration.   

On Tuesday, October 17, a preview of the show was presented on Knoxville’s WBIR TV-10 “Live @5 @ 4” program.

Vogiatzis’s Hot Paper

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Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of hybrid inorganic/organic materials with exceptional properties that have been used in many chemical applications such as catalysis, gas separations, and sensors.

For the first time, gas‐phase catalytic activity occurring at the metal nodes of a crystalline MOF was reported in a recent collaborative work among the groups of Professor Kostas Vogiatzis (theory), and Professors Donna Chen (catalysis, characterization) and Natalia Shustova (synthesis) from the University of South Carolina. 

Vogiatzis said, “Also, this study shows for the first time a rhodium at oxidation state II can be introduced in a MOF. “

The electronic structure of the heterobimetallic Cu-Rh node and the reaction mechanism of the hydrogenation of propylene was elucidated by post-doctoral associate Rajesh Thayalan in Professor Vogiatzis research group.

The conclusions of this collaborative work were published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition in an article that was selected as “hot paper” by the editor.