Beyond the Chemical Cemetery: in situ X-ray Characterisation of Structural Changes in Solids

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• Anthony Phillips (Cavendish Laboratory)
• Monday 08 November 2010, 16:00-17:00
• Harker 2 lecture room, Department of Earth Sciences, Downing Site.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Ian Farnan.

We often think of crystal structures as essentially rigid—but in many cases parts of the structure have considerable freedom of movement, and may even undergo outright chemical reaction, within the crystal lattice. I will discuss two families of materials in which substantial atomic motion gives rise to unusual, useful properties. First, in frameworks of d10 metals connected by cyanide bridges, the motion of the cyanide ligands gives rise to anomalous thermal expansion behaviour; I show that this can easily be tuned by altering the composition of the material. Second, ruthenium-sulfur dioxide complexes undergo photoinduced linkage isomerism, which leads to properties potentially useful in holographic data storage. I demonstrate the powerful influence of the local crystal structure over the structural changes observed.

This talk is part of the Mineral Sciences Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Department of Earth Sciences seminars
• Harker 2 lecture room, Department of Earth Sciences, Downing Site
• Mineral Sciences Seminars

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