Selective Synthesis, Structures, and Properties of Oxynitride Materials

Project Title: Selective Synthesis, Structures, and Properties of Oxynitride Materials PART 1: NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY Modern society is enabled by technology; new materials enable modern technologies. With support from the Solid State and Materials Chemistry program in the Division of Materials Research, this project progresses the science of materials synthesis to expand a new and emerging family of materials that couple metal ions between oxygen and nitrogen atoms. The approach taken in this project imparts new types of bonding in materials that yield novel functionality. The materials of focus in this project present opportunities to advance applications in magnetism, polar materials, and electrochemical energy storage. This project also integrates a broadly impacting educational outreach program to develop and distribute Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education activity kits that provide 90-minute authentic research experiences in the field of the chemistry of functional materials to secondary schools throughout Colorado. PART 2: TECHNICAL SUMMARY With support from the Solid State and Materials Chemistry program in the Division of Materials Research, this project seeks to selectively synthesize new oxynitride-based materials and to understand the resulting structure/property relationships. For the heteroanionic materials that have been discovered, the result of having two anions enables enhanced and unique properties relative to their single-anion congeners. However, oxynitrides are hard to synthesize with stoichiometric control, particularly for later transition metals. This project seeks to expand this under-represented class of oxynitride-based materials by employing recent advances in carbodiimide chemistry, as the carbodiimide polyanion behaves as if it were a divalent nitride. Specifically, this project tackles (1) the synthesis of oxycarbodiimide insulating ferromagnets, (2) the synthesis of perovskite-derived oxycarbodiimides, and (3) synthesis science to understand complex anion exchange reactions. This project also (4) provides educational outreach throughout Colorado by developing and distributing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education activity kits that facilitate 90-minute research experiences on the chemistry of functional materials in secondary school classrooms. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.