Professor Alice Sullivan

Research

Research Interests:

Our work deals with design and synthesis of porous and network materials and coatings with in-built functionality servicing application areas including catalysis and separation processes - heterogeneous catalytic oxidation and carbon-carbon coupling are of special interest. For example, silica supported palladium thioglycolates and palladium dithianes are new and effective catalytic materials for the Heck and Suzuki cross coupling chemistries which are heavily used in pharmaceutical and fine chemical synthesis.

The high Pd affinity of the sulphur ligands in the materials inhibits leaching and facilitates reusability. J. Mol. Catal. A. Chemical 2007, 273, 298 and in press. The materials are formed by sol gel or grafting methods as particles, coated particles, or films. Electrosprays are a very novel means of controlling morphology of structures from the living sols at the nano to micrometer levels. Macromol. Chem. Phys. 2007, 208, 2032-2038.

Many aspects are currently being commercialized through spin-out company activities. Small molecule synthesis for applications such as metal chelation and sensing as well as surface labeling exploiting built-in fluorescence is another area in which we are currently active. Inorg. Chem. 2006, 45, 5328. In this work we are exploring structural and spectroscopic chemistries of systems with phosphonate groups (these act as binding centres for acceptor atoms) attached to a range of biocompatible chromophores that can behave as reporters or labels.

Publications

• Browse a list of publications by Alice Sullivan

Supervision

• Sai Maddala
• Krystelle Mafina