Associate Professor Graham C Saunders
Associate Professor
Qualifications: B.A.(Hons) Oxon, D.Phil Oxon
Personal Website: http://sci.waikato.ac.nz/about-us/people/gsaunder
Research Interests
Research is directed towards using the properties of the carbon―fluorine bond in organometallic chemistry and for highly repellant surfaces.
- Organometallic Chemistry
- The extreme strength and the electronic and steric properties of the C―F bond are used to confer useful properties on organometallic complexes, in particular catalytic activity.
- C―F bond fission is used to synthesize organometallic complexes, not accessible by other routes.
- Superhydrophobic Surfaces
- The extreme water repellancy of perfluoroalkyl groups is used to confer superhydrophobicity on metal surfaces. The work has been highlighted by Nature and Scientific American. The simple fabrication technique allows a range of unusual phenomena to be investigated, such as the Cheerios Effect and 'super-buoyancy', which allows boats to be constructed of metal mesh, and has potential industrial importance.
Research Supervised
PhD
- Thomas, Hayden (submitted). Synthesis and reactivity of iridium(III) and rhodium (III) piano-stool complexes of NHC ligands bearing fluorinated substituents.
- Bandaru, Sravan (in progress). Synthesis and applications of metal complexes of carbohydrate and fluoroaryl substituted N-heterocyclic carbenes.
- Acharige, Udari (in progress). Crystal Engineering via Imidazolium Salts.
- Sain, Prithwish (in progress). Crystal Engineering by Arene-polyfluoroarene π-π stacking.
MSc
- Pachal, Sam (2012). Superhydrophobic titanium and titanium dioxide.
- Hanan Althagbi (2013). Perfluoroaryl heterocycles for crystl engineering.
BSc (Hons)
- Thomas, Hayden (2015). Synthesis and characterisation of mecury and rhodium NHC complexes containing polyfluoroaryl substituents.
- Schroder, Ivan (2012). Synthesis of dicyandiamide derivatives for agricultural applications.
Teaching Commitments
Expertise
Chemistry; Science; X-Ray
Recent Publications
Tang, H., Saunders, G. C., Raymond, O., Ma, X., & Henderson, W. (2020). Pyrrole thioamide complexes of organo-rhodium(III), -iridium(III) and -ruthenium(II). Inorganica Chimica Acta, 506. doi:10.1016/j.ica.2020.119545
Marr, A. C., Saunders, G. C., & Thomas, H. (2020). The crystal structures of 1-(polyfluorophenylmethyl)-3-methylimidazolium bromide salts. Journal of Fluorine Chemistry, 235. doi:10.1016/j.jfluchem.2020.109556
Lane, J. R., & Saunders, G. C. (2020). Theoretical study of the structures of 4-(2,3,5,6-tetrafluoropyridyl)diphenylphosphine oxide and tris(pentafluorophenyl)phosphine oxide: Why does the crystal structure of (tetrafluoropyridyl)diphenylphosphine oxide have two different P=O bond lengths?. Molecules (Basel, Switzerland), 25(12), 11 pages. doi:10.3390/molecules25122778
Morgan, P. J., Hanson-Heine, M. W. D., Thomas, H. P., Saunders, G. C., Marr, A. C., & Licence, P. (2020). C-F Bond Activation of a Perfluorinated Ligand Leading to Nucleophilic Fluorination of an Organic Electrophile. Organometallics, 39(11), 2116-2124. doi:10.1021/acs.organomet.0c00176