Research

Summary The research carried out in the group concerns the rational design of novel solids for use as shape-selective sorbents and catalysts. Materials of interest include microporous zeolites, aluminophosphates, aluminophosphonates, inorganic-organic hybrids and mesoporous silicas. Additional functionallity may be conferred on these materials by intoduducing modifications to, for example, the pore walls or by the addition of metal cations or by the incorporation of organic moeties (such as enzymes or metal complexes) into the framework/pores during or after synthesis. Catalytic and sorption properties can then studied and evaluated. Further details may be found by accessing specific group members’ pages (below). Principal Investigator Dr Paul Wright Post-doctoral Fellows Stuart Miller Postgraduate Students Lyndsey Ritchie Maria Castro Gordon Pearce

Wright Group (clickable imagemap)     more...

Facilities

Based within the School of Chemistry, we are part of the St Andrews Centre for Advanced Materials and are consortium members of the Wolfson Catalysis facility at St Andrews; we benifit from these facilities and have equipment for the synthesis, characteristaion and catalysic testing of porous materials, including:

• autoclaves, ovens, tube furnaces and Schlenk lines for materials preparation
• powder and single crystal X-ray diffraction (CCD detectors), liquid and solid state NMR, ESR, FT-IR, UV-VIS spectroscopies, electron microscopy (TEM, SEM), TGA-DTA/TGA-MS (thermal analysis), IGA (adsorption isotherm measurement, gasses and vapours), for materials chracterisation
• stirred autoclave batch reactor (liquid/solid/gas reactions), gas flow reactors (gas/solid reactions), GC and GC-MS, for acid and redox catalyst evaluation

In addition we have excellent computing facilities for data analysis and document creation; hardware includes: networked PCs (with CD-RW and Zip drives, a scanner and laser/colour inkjet printers), SGI and Sun workstations.

The group also uses central facilities, including the synchrotron X-radiation sources at the Daresbury Laboratory and ESRF and the neutron source (Isis) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Pictures are available of some of these facilities:

• Laboratories
• Powder X-ray diffraction
• Electron microscopy
• NMR
• ESR
• Thermal Analysis