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Author: Kayla Benson

Moseley and Sabury Recognized at Chancellor’s Honors Banquet

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The Chancellor’s Honors Banquet is held each spring to recognize students, faculty, staff and friends of the University of Tennessee for their extraordinary achievements. Extraordinary Professional Promise honors are awarded to undergraduate and graduate students who demonstrate professional promise in teaching, research or other contributions.

Duncan Moseley, a Graduate student of the Xue lab, and Sina Sabury , a graduate student of the Kilbey lab, are shining examples of excellence in our graduate program.

Moseley says, “I am extremely grateful to receive this award from the university, and even more grateful to Dr. Xue for all of his hard work to make me a better researcher and chemist.” Sabury also shares his gratitude, “I am blessed to to receive this honor and I appreciate the efforts from the University for this recognition. “

A full list of the recipients can https://honorsbanquet.utk.edu/2019-extraordinary-professional-promise/

 

Sina Sabury
Sina Sabury with Kilbey Group
Duncan Moseley with Xue group

Xue Group Published and Front Cover in EurJIC

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The Xue group is excited to announce that their paper “Probing Magnetic Excitations in CoII Single‐Molecule Magnets by Inelastic Neutron Scattering” was published and was selected as the front cover art in the European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry.

This research explores how single-molecule magnets (SMMs) and qubits are of intense current interest for their potential applications as new generation of data storage materials and quantum computing. Graduate student, Duncan Moseley, explains, “The cobalt compound studied here shows SMM properties. Direct observation of magnetic transitions in SMMs and spectroscopic characterization of phonons (molecular and lattice vibrations) in SMMs are challenging.”

The work shows that Inelastic Neutron Scattering (INS) is a method to probe magnetic transitions in SMMs. Xue’s group, through collaboration with scientists at several institutions, including Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at ORNL, NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) and Max Planck Institutes in Germany, investigated two magnetic transitions in the Co SMM.

Their recent work in Nature Communications using Raman and far-IR showed spin-phonon/vibration couplings in the compound. However, INS spectra here unambiguously reveal the magnetic transitions. Phonon calculations in the work help provide a complete picture of how this cobalt-based SMM behaves.

Learn More

 

Dai Group Published and Front Cover in ChemSusChem

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The Dai lab just published an article in ChemSusChem and the article was featured on the front cover of the journal.

Their research investigates how lithium ion batteries (LIBs) dominate the market for portable electronic devices, limited energy and power density of LIBs offered by conventional electrodes hindered their application for electric vehicles. In order to offer a viable solution to this problem, the group has developed a direct fluorination method to form highly pure oxyfluoride electrode materials that have better electrochemical performances.

With this idea, a novel approach for converting 2D Mxene to 2D TiOF2 with enhanced electrochemical stability and energy density via direct fluorination using elemental fluorine is reported for the first time. 2D TiOF2 offers increased capacity, rate capability and long cycling stability due to its unique layered structure comparing to conventional TiOF2. 

Graduate research assistant, Bishnu Thapaliya, explains, “In this work, we demonstrated that direct fluorination of Mxene results a hybrid metal-carbon oxyfluoride with enhanced electrochemical performance compared to traditional oxyfluoride. Therefore, we believe this novel approach opens a new avenue for the development of many 2D hybrid metal-carbon oxyfluoride materials that can be applied to broader materials research.”

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Chemistry Department Held 2019 Honors Day

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Department of Chemistry held the 40th annual Honors Day on Thursday, April 25, 2019 to recognize the achievements among students, faculty and staff members of the department. Below, you will find a complete list of awardees this year.

UNDERGRADUATE AWARDS

CRC Press General Chemistry Award  Alexander H. Barrett
C. W. Keenan Outstanding General Chemistry Student Award Sylvia R. Vonderwel
Halbert and Anne Carmichael Scholarship Rowan K. Borsari
Dr. Lucy E. Scroggie Scholarship Ellie L. Lancaster
C. A. Buehler Chemistry Scholarship John H. Hymel
Department of Chemistry Scholarships Elijah G. Hix and Nicholas M. Legaux
ACS-Hach Land Grant Scholarships Anna K. Morgan and Natalie J. Parsons
Melaven-Rhenium Scholarship Alexa N. Griffith, John H. Hymel, and Isaac W. Haynes
Honors Chemistry Recognition Rowan K. Borsari, Jeevan Kypa, and Julia B. McGuire

GRADUATE AWARDS

Outstanding Teaching Awards Caleb M. Gibson and Gavin A. McCarver
Keenan Teaching Awards Natalie E. Dunn
Second Year Candidacy Award Andrew J. Chancellor, Gavin A. McCarver and Avery Blockmon
Judson Hall Robertson Fellowship in Analytical Chemistry Mohammed F. Hasan
Graduate Fellowship for Achievement in Inorganic Chemistry Duncan H. Moseley
Jerome Eastham Fellowship in Organic Chemistry Joseph F. DeJesus
Eugene John Barber Fellowship in Physical Chemistry Amanda J. Clune
Burchfield Burridge Warner Fellowship in Polymer Chemistry Christopher R. Maroon
Gleb Mamantov Graduate Chemistry Scholar Eric D. Tague
George L. Sivils Graduate Student Award Jordan M. Kaiser and Dayton P. Street

STUDENT RECOGNITIONS

Chancellor’s 2019 Top Collegiate Scholar Award Ian C. Bennie
Chancellor’s Citation for Extraordinary Professional Promise Duncan H. Moseley and Sina Sabury
Winners of the Board of Visitor’s Poster Competition  Lindsey N. Miller and Bryan T. Seymour
SARIF Summer Fellowship  Kiman Park
National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship Dayton P. Street

STAFF AWARDS

Outstanding Service Award Terri L. Galyon and Landon K. Sommer
Carol Moulton ACGS Service Award Linda C. Sherman
James F. Green ACGS Service Award Pamela D. Roach

FACULTY AWARDS

Ziegler Professorship Mark Dadmun and Michael Best
T. Ffrancon Williams Professorship Brian Long
Alexander Vanhook Professorships Craig Barnes and Tessa Calhoun
 ACS Award in Separations Science and Technology Sheng Dai
2019 MRS (Materials Research Society) Fellow

Sheng Dai
2018 IMMA (International Mesostructured Material Association) Award Sheng Dai

FACULTY RECOGNITION

New Faculty Constance Bailey and Thanh Do
In Memoriam Frank Vogt

 

Vogt Memorial

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Frank VogtThe Department of Chemistry is hosting a morning dedicated to the memory of longtime faculty member Frank Vogt.

First, due to Frank’s dedication to research, we felt it would be appropriate to honor this by holding a special seminar on the day of the Memorial. Professor Jean-Francois Masson from the Universite de Montreal has generously agreed to give this research talk. Masson is a world leader in Frank’s field of Bioanalytical Chemistry and a close colleague of Frank’s. Details for the seminar are listed below:

Time: Friday, May 24th at 10 AM
Location: UT Buehler Chemistry Building room 415
Title: Plasmonic nanobiosensors: From therapeutic drug and environmental monitoring to optophysiology of living cells http://www.sprbiosensors.com/

The memorial will take place at 2 PM that day in the new student union room 169 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. If you would like to share pictures of Frank Vogt please email our recruiting and outreach coordinator Kayla Benson (Kayla@utk.edu). Anyone who would like to speak at the Memorial can contact Michael Best (mdbest@utk.edu).

We hope that you will be able to join us to celebrate Frank’s life, career and contributions to Chemistry and the University of Tennessee.

NSF Presentation by Cook May 6, 2019

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The University of Tennessee Emeritus faculty, Kelsey Cook, gives NSF presentation on Monday, May 6, 2019 at 4:00 PM in Buehler Hall room 511.

Kelsey Cook

Think BIG? NSF’S 10 Big Ideas and the Employment Quartet

The annual Federal appropriations process involves identification of agency priorities concordant with those of Congress and the Administration. Currently, the National Science Foundation has identified “Ten Big Ideas” which guide our new investments in research, infrastructure, and workforce development. While funding of “core research” remains an important NSF priority, the “Ideas” can help guide proposal and career aims for academic scientists, engineers, and students.

 

Musfeldt’s DMREF Team

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The Musfeldt lab provides a very unique opportunity for students with the DMREF team (Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future). Graduate student, Michael Yokosuk, says his “time spent with the DMREF team has been a very rewarding one. They have challenged me to think outside the box, pushing me out of my comfort zone of chemistry to learn new science in physics and materials science.  They have given me the opportunity to engineer and form my own projects to incorporate new science, helping, encouraging, and guiding me along the way.  The DMREF team, being some of the greatest scientists in their fields, have shown me what it takes to be a strong and successful scientist.” Yokosuk also successfully defended his dissertation this month and will be graduating with his PhD.

Vogiatzis Group Lands Second Cover of J. Phys. Chem. A

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The Vogiatzis Group published their research “Understanding the Nature of Weak Interactions between Functionalized Boranes and N2/O2, Promising Functional Groups for Gas Separations” in The Journal of Physical Chemistry A. This work also landed the second cover for the April 18, 2019 issue. 

This research explores the separation of nitrogen and oxygen gases, which is considered as a very challenging process, since both O2 and N2 are nonpolar molecules with similar kinetic diameters.

Electronic structure theory can provide a fundamental understanding of effects that can lead to selective binding of nitrogen or oxygen gas for the development of novel separation processes. Boranes can bind dinitrogen through a dative bond, where the boron acts as a σ acceptor and back-donates through π orbitals.

To better understand these interactions, the group has performed highly accurate CCSD(F12)(T) and CCSDT(Q) computations for the BH3–N2 and BH3–O2 complexes. The coupled-cluster binding energies were used as reference for benchmarking different density functionals, and larger functionalized boranes were examined at the M05/def2-TZVPPD level. Symmetry adapted perturbation theory (SAPT) calculations were performed for the elucidation of the nature of the interaction between nitrogen and substituted boranes and how direct or distal functionalizations affect the strength of the weak dative bonds. By use of these methods, several boranes were found to bind N2 over O2.

These molecular species are promising functional groups for incorporation into the next generation of advanced materials for efficient N2/O2 separations.

Dai Elected to the Class of 2019 MRS Fellows

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Sheng Dai has been elected to the class of 2019 MRS Fellows by the Materials Research Society (MRS). This Honor is bestowed upon MRS Members who are notable for their distinguished research accomplishments and outstanding contributions to the advancement of materials research worldwide.

MRS states: The vitality, diversity and opportunity of materials research are all epitomized in this group of new Fellows, whose remarkable accomplishments are highlighted by their brief citations. We are confident that the examples of excellence, enterprise and dedication displayed by this steadily growing community of MRS Fellows will serve to encourage and inspire all materials researchers, at all levels, and will also support and enhance the prestige and recognition of materials research in serving the broader community worldwide.

Dai specifically was recognized for his “significant and sustained contributions in pioneering and developing novel synthetic methods for functional carbon materials for energy applications.”

Dai Group Published in Nature Communications

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Dai group has recently published a paper entitled “Taming the stability of Pd active phases through a compartmentalizing strategy toward nanostructured catalyst supports” in Nature Communications.  This paper reported a new strategy in developing stable supports for high-temperature heterogeneous catalysis.   A highly stable catalyst for methane oxidation was successfully developed based on this strategy.  The general strategy can be used to synthesize other support architectures for other high-temperature catalysis processes.

As part of the Springer Nature SharedIt initiative, a stable, shortened URL is now available providing full-text access to the paper by using the following link:

https://rdcu.be/bvlzL

As an open access article, the readers will be able to download and print the PDF, and access the full-text HTML as usual. Springer Nature is working to assist all authors in disseminating their research to the wider community, and is now also providing authors publishing in subscription journals (with the ability to generate a unique shareable link).