Inorganic Research
The Penn State Department of Chemistry has one of the leading Inorganic Chemistry groups in the world. Faculty research interests include the traditional areas of bioinorganic, coordination, main group, organometallic, and solid-state chemistry, as well as strong interdisciplinary efforts in inorganic materials, nanoscience, metalloenzymes, active matter, and catalysis. Several groups seek to understand how metal-containing proteins and enzymes function. Other groups develop cutting edge methods to synthesize and characterize new molecules, polymers, solids, and nanoparticles and apply them to forefront applications in energy, medicine, and electronics.
Faculty
Harry Allcock Evan Pugh University Professor of Chemistry
Polymer synthesis, materials chemistry, and biomedicine
Amie Boal Associate Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and of Molecular Biology
Structural biology and mechanisms of metalloproteins
Marty Bollinger Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Mechanisms of redox metalloenzymes and metallocofactor assembly
Squire Booker Evan Pugh University Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Biochemistry; enzymology; protein chemistry; iron-sulfur clusters
Bert Chandler Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry
Metal nanoparticle chemistry, enzymology, and catalysis
Joseph Cotruvo Louis Martarano Career Development Professor of Chemistry
Chemical biology of metal ion and redox homeostasis
Ramesh Giri Weinreb Early Career Professor of Chemistry
Organic, organometallic, inorganic, and materials chemistry
Christine Keating Professor of Chemistry
Bioinspired materials chemistry. Synthesis and characterization of organic/inorganic composite particles.
Carsten Krebs Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Mechanisms of metalloenzymes
Benjamin Lear Associate Professor of Chemistry
Interplay between electronic properties of materials and their chemical environment
Raymond Schaak DuPont Professor of Materials Chemistry
Synthesis and applications of inorganic solids and nanomaterials
Ayusman Sen Verne M. Willaman Professor of Chemistry
Self-powered nanoscale and microscale motors and pumps
Alexey Silakov Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Metalloenzymology and structural biology
Courtesy Faculty
Roman Engel-Herbert Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
Synthesis and characterization of oxide thin films
Zhiqiang Mao Professor of Physics
Synthesis and properties of quantum materials
Robert Rioux Friedrich G. Helfferich Professor of Chemical Engineering
Heterogeneous catalysis and reaction mechanisms in nanoscale systems
Mauricio Terrones Verne M. Willaman Professor of Physics
Synthesis and applications of 2-D materials
Recent Representative Publications
Basnet, P.; Kc, S.; Dhungana, R. K.; Shrestha, B.; Boyle, T. J.; Giri, R. Synergistic Bimetallic Ni/Ag and Ni/Cu Catalysis for Regioselective γ,δ-Diarylation of Alkenyl Ketimines: Addressing β-H Elimination by in Situ Generation of Cationic Ni(II) Catalysts. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2018, 140 (46), 15586–15590.
Chen, Z.; Chang, J. W.; Balasanthiran, C.; Milner, S. T.; Rioux, R. M. Anisotropic Growth of Silver Nanoparticles Is Kinetically Controlled by Polyvinylpyrrolidone Binding. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2019, 141 (10), 4328–4337.
Cirri, A.; Silakov, A.; Jensen, L.; Lear, B. J. Chain Length and Solvent Control over the Electronic Properties of Alkanethiolate-Protected Gold Nanoparticles at the Molecule-to-Metal Transition. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2016, 138 (49), 15987–15993.
Cotruvo, J. A.; Featherston, E. R.; Mattocks, J. A.; Ho, J. V.; Laremore, T. N. Lanmodulin: A Highly Selective Lanthanide-Binding Protein from a Lanthanide-Utilizing Bacterium. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2018, 140 (44), 15056–15061.
Donahue, P. P.; Zhang, C.; Nye, N.; Miller, J.; Wang, C.-Y.; Tang, R.; Christodoulides, D.; Keating, C. D.; Liu, Z. Controlling Disorder by Electric-Field-Directed Reconfiguration of Nanowires To Tune Random Lasing. ACS Nano 2018, 12 (7), 7343–7351.
Dunham, N. P.; Chang, W.-C.; Mitchell, A. J.; Martinie, R. J.; Zhang, B.; Bergman, J. A.; Rajakovich, L. J.; Wang, B.; Silakov, A.; Krebs, C.; Boal, A. K.; Bollinger, J. M. Two Distinct Mechanisms for C–C Desaturation by Iron(II)- and 2-(Oxo)Glutarate-Dependent Oxygenases: Importance of α-Heteroatom Assistance. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2018, 140 (23), 7116–7126.
Fenton, J. L.; Steimle, B. C.; Schaak, R. E. Tunable Intraparticle Frameworks for Creating Complex Heterostructured Nanoparticle Libraries. Science 2018, 360 (6388), 513–517.
Lapano, J.; Brahlek, M.; Zhang, L.; Roth, J.; Pogrebnyakov, A.; Engel-Herbert, R. Scaling Growth Rates for Perovskite Oxide Virtual Substrates on Silicon. Nature Communications2019, 10 (1).
Lei, Y.; Pakhira, S.; Fujisawa, K.; Wang, X.; Iyiola, O. O.; López, N. P.; Elías, A. L.; Rajukumar, L. P.; Zhou, C.; Kabius, B.; Alem, N.; Endo, M.; Lv, R.; Mendoza-Cortes, J. L.; Terrones, M. Low-Temperature Synthesis of Heterostructures of Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Alloys (WxMo1–xS2) and Graphene with Superior Catalytic Performance for Hydrogen Evolution. ACS Nano 2017, 11 (5), 5103–5112.
Liu, Y.; Kempinger, S.; He, R.; Day, T. D.; Moradifar, P.; Yu, S.-Y.; Russell, J. L.; Torres, V. M.; Xu, P.; Mallouk, T. E.; Mohney, S. E.; Alem, N.; Samarth, N.; Badding, J. V. Confined Chemical Fluid Deposition of Ferromagnetic Metalattices. Nano Letters 2017, 18 (1), 546–552.
Martinie, R. J.; Pollock, C. J.; Matthews, M. L.; Bollinger, J. M.; Krebs, C.; Silakov, A. Vanadyl as a Stable Structural Mimic of Reactive Ferryl Intermediates in Mononuclear Nonheme-Iron Enzymes. Inorganic Chemistry 2017, 56 (21), 13382–13389.
Mccarthy, E. L.; Booker, S. J. Destruction and Reformation of an Iron-Sulfur Cluster during Catalysis by Lipoyl Synthase. Science 2017, 358 (6361), 373–377.
Ng, T. L.; Rohac, R.; Mitchell, A. J.; Boal, A. K.; Balskus, E. P. An N-Nitrosating Metalloenzyme Constructs the Pharmacophore of Streptozotocin. Nature 2019, 566 (7742), 94–99.
Ren, Y.; Li, Z.; Allcock, H. R. Molecular Engineering of Polyphosphazenes and SWNT Hybrids with Potential Applications as Electronic Materials. Macromolecules 2018, 51 (14), 5011–5018.
Tansi, B. M.; Peris, M. L.; Shklyaev, O. E.; Balazs, A. C.; Sen, A. Rücktitelbild: Organization of Particle Islands through Light-Powered Fluid Pumping (Angew. Chem. 8/2019). Angewandte Chemie 2019, 131 (8), 2548–2548.
Tamanaha, E.; Zhang, B.; Guo, Y.; Chang, W.; Barr, E.; Xing, G.; St. Clair, J.; Ye, S.; Neese, F.; Bollinger, J.M.; Krebs, C. Spectroscopic Evidence for the Two C–H-Cleaving Intermediates of Aspergillus nidulans Isopenicillin NSynthase. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2016, 138 (28), 8862-8874.