Not new, but figured I'd introduce myself again. I'm working on my #PhD in #chemistry, working on making sensors for dangerous gasses out of uranium. I sometimes stream myself doing chemistry at twitch.tv/canageek (Also video games where @DialMforMara and I do lore and discussion streams.)
I also play #tabletop #RPGs and other games, particularly #GURPS and #CallOfCthulhu and would love to talk about those.
Main account @Canageek
@Canageek Does the actinide provide the coordination site for the gas molecule? Or is it a different mechanism?
@fobo Exactly. Big so there is lots of room, and highly oxophillic to get my target molecules to bind. Can't say more as I'm still working on the publication, but I've got some really promising results, just having trouble due to a touchy synthesis. (i.e. certain reagents need an excess, works at 125C but not at all at 120C...) Figuring out how to scale it up is current problem.
@Canageek Very cool. Post the link when your publication goes live, I'd be interested to read it!
@fobo I've got the first one up, just covering structural work since I need to lay the groundwork first since so few people do uranium coordination chemistry with non-carboxylates: dx.doi.org/10.1039/C7DT00942A
@Canageek When I was in grad school there was a prof down the hall from me that did uranium coordination chemistry, but I confess to not paying close attention to their posters ;). My sensor work was focused on detecting organophosphates like Sarin, and peroxides (explosives like TATP).
DOIs 10.1021/ja710324f and 10.1021/ja803531r
@fobo Cool. We've talked about doing those, but we don't want to work with anything too dangerous. We've got a paper on H2S out, and that is about our limit. Plus these days there are pretty good ways of detecting TATP, so looking for less studied targets.
@Canageek @Canageek @DialMforMara
My graduate work (Chem PhD, UCSD '08) was on gas sensors based on organic semiconductors! Don't think they ever went anywhere, but it was interesting work.