Physical Chemistry
Dr. Dino Villagran
Research Interests
Our research projects fall into the areas of physical inorganic chemistry with primary emphasis on multielectron redox chemistry. Other areas of chemistry such as computational, synthetic and analytical chemistry are part of the focus of our group. We target problems of energy, environmental chemistry, and magnetism focusing on physical measurements and computational and theoretical studies. We utilize advanced synthetic techniques to prepare novel inorganic compounds based on transition metals that target the activation of small molecules and at the same time we pursue studies on their electrochemical and magnetic properties. We synthetically manipulate the structure and bonding of these inorganic compounds to tailor them to perform attractive multielectron redox chemistry. Our research program relies on X-ray crystallography, UV-Vis spectroscopy, electrochemistry, computational methods, and magnetic measurements to obtain information on energy and environmental problems and to expand our objectives into other novel transition metal scaffolds.