Polyoxometalates in the Study of Confined Water

INOR 384

Felix Fernandez-Alonso, F.Fernandez-Alonso@rl.ac.uk1, Helen Thompson1, and Achim Muller2. (1) ISIS Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0QX, United Kingdom, (2) Department of Anorganische Chemie, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany
As the solvent par excellence, water plays a key role in a wide range of phenomena where it is either confined or in close contact with surfaces of nanometer dimensions. These include environments as disparate as rocks and minerals on the Earth's crust, or proteins and biomembranes in living cells. However, the study of changes in the properties of this ubiquitous liquid as a function of ensemble size remains a formidable task to the present day. In this lecture, I shall discuss the combination of polyoxometalate chemistry and neutron scattering as a means of tackling the above challenges. In particular, neutron diffraction and spectroscopy have been applied to the study of water around molybdenum-oxide nanocapsules. Our experimental results show how the topology and chemical make-up of the substrate can impose profound changes in solvation structure and mobility over hitherto unexplored length scales.
 

Polyoxometalates and Related Clusters in Chemistry and Nanoscience
2:00 PM-5:00 PM, Monday, August 20, 2007 BCEC -- 204 A/B, Oral

Division of Inorganic Chemistry

The 234th ACS National Meeting, Boston, MA, August 19-23, 2007