This past fall, our inorganic chemistry professor, Dr. Bill Feighery, spent his research sabbatical working in the laboratory of Dr. Adam Jaffe at the University of Notre Dame. Just yesterday, Jaffe came to IU South Bend to give a talk on "hybrid bronzes" for our senior seminar class. Bronze is a metal alloy of copper (Cu) and tin (Sn), but the only similarity of hybrid bronzes to the metal bronze is that both are shiny. Bronzes are basically layered metal oxides that are doped with additional atoms to alter the electrical and optical properties of the material. Similar to how the properties of nanomaterials can be fine-tuned by varying the size of their nanoparticles, the properties of these bronzes (and semiconductors, in general) can be fine-tuned by varying the concentration of doping atoms. Hybrid bronzes have even more complicated structure by introducing organic layers separating the metal oxide layers. The layers may interact through hydrogen bonding or even through direct bonding when atoms of the organic molecules replace oxygen atoms of the metal oxides. In just a few weeks our students will be giving their own presentations on current literature topics.
