Chemistry

Home » Page 19

Archives

Dai Group Published and Front Cover in ChemSusChem

by

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.”

Learn More

Chemistry Department Held 2019 Honors Day

by

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 AwardSylvia R. Vonderwel
Halbert and Anne Carmichael ScholarshipRowan K. Borsari
Dr. Lucy E. Scroggie ScholarshipEllie L. Lancaster
C. A. Buehler Chemistry ScholarshipJohn H. Hymel
Department of Chemistry ScholarshipsElijah G. Hix and Nicholas M. Legaux
ACS-Hach Land Grant ScholarshipsAnna K. Morgan and Natalie J. Parsons
Melaven-Rhenium ScholarshipAlexa N. Griffith, John H. Hymel, and Isaac W. Haynes
Honors Chemistry RecognitionRowan K. Borsari, Jeevan Kypa, and Julia B. McGuire

GRADUATE AWARDS

Outstanding Teaching AwardsCaleb M. Gibson and Gavin A. McCarver
Keenan Teaching AwardsNatalie E. Dunn
Second Year Candidacy AwardAndrew J. Chancellor, Gavin A. McCarver and Avery Blockmon
Judson Hall Robertson Fellowship in Analytical ChemistryMohammed F. Hasan
Graduate Fellowship for Achievement in Inorganic ChemistryDuncan H. Moseley
Jerome Eastham Fellowship in Organic ChemistryJoseph F. DeJesus
Eugene John Barber Fellowship in Physical ChemistryAmanda J. Clune
Burchfield Burridge Warner Fellowship in Polymer ChemistryChristopher R. Maroon
Gleb Mamantov Graduate Chemistry ScholarEric D. Tague
George L. Sivils Graduate Student AwardJordan M. Kaiser and Dayton P. Street

STUDENT RECOGNITIONS

Chancellor’s 2019 Top Collegiate Scholar AwardIan C. Bennie
Chancellor’s Citation for Extraordinary Professional PromiseDuncan 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 FellowshipDayton P. Street

STAFF AWARDS

Outstanding Service AwardTerri L. Galyon and Landon K. Sommer
Carol Moulton ACGS Service AwardLinda C. Sherman
James F. Green ACGS Service AwardPamela D. Roach

FACULTY AWARDS

Ziegler ProfessorshipMark Dadmun and Michael Best
T. Ffrancon Williams ProfessorshipBrian Long
Alexander Vanhook ProfessorshipsCraig Barnes and Tessa Calhoun
 ACS Award in Separations Science and TechnologySheng Dai
2019 MRS (Materials Research Society) FellowSheng Dai
2018 IMMA (International Mesostructured Material Association) AwardSheng Dai

FACULTY RECOGNITION

New FacultyConstance Bailey and Thanh Do
In MemoriamFrank Vogt

Vogt Memorial

by

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

by

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

by

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

by

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

by

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

by

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 this link:

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).

Jenkins Published in Highly-Profiled Journal Angewandte Chemie

by

David Jenkins and coworkers published a communication demonstrating the first five‑coordinate imide complexes on iron in Angewandte Chemie.

An imide is a nitrogen-metal multiple bond ligand that is associated with catalytic oxidation reactions where a nitrene (NR group) is transferred to an organic substrate.

Jenkins is interested in iron imides due to his studies on aziridination.  An aziridine is a three-membered ring with two carbon atoms and one nitrogen atom that are useful in pharmaceutical syntheses. These five‑coordinate iron imides are postulated to be key intermediates in catalytic aziridination so their isolation may lend insight into this catalytic reaction. Notably in this study, changing the carbon group bound to the nitrogen changed the spin state at the iron center. Thus, these metal complexes required careful structural characterization at the department’s new X-ray facility, spectroscopic measurements (at UT and Harvard University), and theoretical calculations by Kostas Vogiatzis. 

Click here to learn more

Buehler Hall Wins Volunteers First Impression Contest

by

>While the campus has invested tremendously in new projects in recent years, most employees and students are working and learning in existing spaces.

As part of facilities services Volunteer First Impressions contest: faculty, staff, and students were encouraged to submit an idea for renovating public spaces on campus. Typical suggestions include new carpeting, painting, deep cleaning, adding plants or landscaping, and updating signage.

“This is a way to emphasize that all parts of the university are important and all programs are vital to its mission,” said Dave Irvin, associate vice chancellor of Facilities Services. “A lot of people look out at a landscape that hasn’t changed in some time.”

Facilities Services selected 10 entries to receive $10,000 in Facilities Services credit. Work on the projects will begin later in the spring.

“The winners can use the credit not only for labor, but in a wide variety of ways, including interior and exterior furnishings, materials, and landscaping,” Irvin said. “It will be exciting to see the great ideas of our students and employees become reality.”

Buehler Hall Courtyard was the fourth entry selected. The suggestion was submitted by Johnny Jones, The Department of Chemistry’s Technical Director. Johnny recommended the space because the area is “barren.” The courtyard is located just outside of room 300 Buehler, which is a large lecture hall, and it could be utilized as a waiting space for students.