Seminar: "Using Fundamental Inorganic Chemistry to Spur Advances in Materials Science" Prof. Eric Rivard

Speaker:

Prof. Eric Rivard

Department of Chemistry

University of Alberta (Canada)

Title: "Using Fundamental Inorganic Chemistry to Spur Advances in Materials Science"

Abstract

Many potentially useful, yet elusive, chemical species are found mainly in extreme conditions such as at very high temperatures or in the high vacuum of outer space. Over the past eight years our team has been investigating the isolation and use of a reactive class of molecules, called main group hydrides, as precursors to valuable semi-conducting coatings and light-emitting particles under mild conditions. Specifically we were the first group to prepare and isolate the inorganic methylenes EH₂ and ethylenes H₂EEH₂ (E = Si, Ge and Sn) at room temperature in a “bottleable” and useable form.¹ These species are of fundamental and applied interest due to their postulated key role in the industrial formation of pure semi-conducting silicon and germanium, each of which are founding materials of the computer age. In addition we have recently prepared complexes of HBNH,² which places us on a low temperature route to isolating boron nitride (BN), a valuable electrical insulator.

            A second active research domain for us is the generation of phosphorescent materials for LED and bioimaging applications. During our studies into preparing low band gap polytellurophenes for solar cell applications,³ we noted that one of our borylated tellurophene monomers showed bright green phosphorescence both in the solid state and in the presence of oxygen.⁴ This properties are highly desirable for the development of next generation LED materials, and accordingly, our group has been seeking methods to enhance phosphorescence quantum yields, color tunability and charge transport within this new class of emitter. In addition we have recently developed phosphorescent species based on the non-toxic element bismuth, which, due to their long emission wavelengths and lifetimes, could be used as dyes in bioimaging.

1) (a) E. Rivard, Chem. Soc. Rev. 2016, 45, 989-1003. (b) S. M. I. Al-Rafia, A. C. Malcolm, R. McDonald, M. J. Ferguson, and E. Rivard, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 8354-8357. (c) S. M. I. Al-Rafia, A. C. Malcolm, S. K. Liew, M. J. Ferguson, R. McDonald, and E. Rivard, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 777-779.

2) A. K. Swarnakar, C. Hering-Junghans, K. Nagata, M. J. Ferguson, R. McDonald, N. Tokitoh, and E. Rivard, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 10666-10669.

3) (a) He, G.; Kang, L.; Torres Delgado, W.; Shynkaruk, O.; Ferguson, M. J.; McDonald, R.; Rivard, E. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 135 (2013) 5360; (b) S. M. Parke, M. P. Boone and E. Rivard, Chem. Commun., 2016, 52, 9485-9505.

4) (a) G. He, W. Torres Delgado, D. J. Schatz, C. Merten, A. Mohammadpour, L. Mayr, M. J. Ferguson, A. Brown, K. Shankar, and E. Rivard, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 4587-4591. (b) G. He, B. D. Wiltshire, P. Choi, A. Savin, S. Sun, A. Mohammadpour, M. J. Ferguson, R. McDonald, S. Farsinezhad, A. Brown, K. Shankar, and E. Rivard, Chem. Commun. 2015, 51, 5444-5447.

Biography

Eric Rivard obtained his Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of Toronto, where he conducted NSERC supported work on inorganic polymer chemistry. After NSERC postdoctoral work at Caltech and UC Davis (USA), and a brief research stay at Monash University (Australia), Prof. Rivard began his independent career at the University of Alberta in 2008. In 2014 he was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. In addition to obtaining various teaching awards, he held Alberta Innovates-New Faculty, Petro-Canada Young Innovator, and Faculty of Science Research awards. He was a JSPS Long-term Visitation Fellow and an RCMS Visiting Professor (Nagoya) in 2015-2016 and is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow. He has published over 90 refereed papers thus far (h-index = 27).