Prof. Stuart James will give a talk on “Pt-acetylides with N-donor ligands, Mechanochemistry and Porous Liquids”.
Stuart James is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Queen’s University Belfast, having previously studied and worked in UK and European Universities including the Universities of Bristol (PhD under Professor Paul Pringle), Cambridge (with Paul Raithby), Imperial College London, Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg) and Utrecht.
At Cambridge in the Raithby group, around 1995, he happily overlapped with Chris Adams for a few months. They shared a tucked-away lab, many stimulating conversations and plenty of laughs. They also came to share a research project on a new class of platinum acetylides. At that time, whereas almost all work to date had been done using phosphines as co-ligands, they explored the potential of co-ligands such as bipyridines. This lead to some lovely chemistry – extending Pt-acetylides from Pt(II) to Pt(IV), and engendering properties such as luminescence and electrochemical behaviour. Several other groups worldwide took up this work thereafter.
In his talk he will recount the work done at Cambridge, and give brief overviews of Mechanochemistry and Porous Liquids – two topics currently pursued in his research group at Queen’s University Belfast. Each of these counter-intuitive research topics presents fascinating scientific challenges and opportunities, each can provide more sustainable processes, and each has resulted in a spin-out company.