Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The research programme is divided into two general areas which, however, are interlinked through computation. The colour of a chemical compound actually provides a map of its detailed atomic structure through the field of Spectroscopy. Electrons can be added or removed to generate new species with energies probed by the field of Electrochemistry. Much of our work is devoted to providing the theory which links these two fields. In this fashion, using both electrochemical and spectroscopic data, aided by computation, we can obtain a very detailed understanding of the structure and reactivity of chemical compounds. The publication of such linkages enables other researchers to similarly probe and design their own compounds. The second area probes the chemistry of a group of species called "phthalocyanines" using electrochemical, spectroscopic and computational techniques. The phthalocyanines are synthetic pigments related to the pigment which causes the red colour of blood; however they are usually blue or green and do not occur in nature. They are of growing importance in the emerging field of molecular electronics, information storage and chemical sensors etc.