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Martin Schroder

Dean of the Faculty of Science, Professor and Head of Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Science

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Biography

Martin Schröder was born near London of Estonian parents. He gained his BSc in Chemistry from the University of Sheffield (1975), PhD and DIC from Imperial College, University of London (1978) under the supervision of Professor W.P. Griffith, and after postdoctoral fellowships at the ETH (Professor A. Eschenmoser) on a Royal Society Swiss National Foundation Fellowship and the University of Cambridge (Professor J. Lewis), he was appointed in 1982 to a Senior Demonstratorship at the University of Edinburgh. He was subsequently promoted to Lecturer (1983), Reader (1991) and Professor (1994), and in 1995 moved to his present position as Head and Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. He was Head of the School of Chemistry at Nottingham from 1999-2005. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto, Canada (1990), the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand (1995) and the Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France (2004). He has published 430 publications and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC). His awards include the Corday-Morgan Medal and Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1991, a Royal Society of Edinburgh Support Research Fellowship in 1991-2, Tilden Lecturer of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2001, the Royal Society of Chemistry award for the Chemistry of Transition Metals in 2003, a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award in 2005, a Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship for 2005/06, and the Royal Society of Chemistry award for Chemistry of the Noble Metals and their Compounds in 2008. In 2005 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Tallinn Technical University, Estonia, and in 2009 an ERC Advanced Investigator's Grant. In 2011 he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Science.

Research Summary

Co-ordination, organometallic and supramolecular chemistry of metal complexes. The binding of metal cations and anions to complex macrocyclic ionophores. Ionophores and receptors for metal salt… read more

Selected Publications

Current Research

Co-ordination, organometallic and supramolecular chemistry of metal complexes. The binding of metal cations and anions to complex macrocyclic ionophores. Ionophores and receptors for metal salt extraction and transport. Stabilisation of unusual metal oxidation state [eg mononuclear complexes of Ni(I), Ni(III), Pd(III), Pt(III), Pd(I), Pt(I), Ag(II), Au(II)]. Structural and functional models for NiFe hydrogenase: Ni(III)/(II)/(I)-thiolate complexes and ligand redox non-innocence, catalysis and redox interconversion of hydrogen and protons. Nanochemistry: synthesis of functional nanomaterials and assembly of nanoscale superstructures: synthesis and characterisation of co-ordination framework polymers and networks; micro and meso-porous materials for hydrogen, gas and volatile organic compound storage, absorption and extraction.

Key discoveries have included:

  • the comprehensive development of the chemistry thioether macrocycles to afford complexes of unique stereochemistry and electronic properties
  • the first examples of stable mononuclear radical complexes incorporating hitherto unknown metal oxidation states
  • development of selective extractants for precious and toxic metals
  • the supramolecular chemistry of iodine and polyiodides, and their second sphere coordination
  • a new coordination and materials chemistry defining new types of topologies for nanoscale framework solids and of highly-connected metal-ligand frameworks, including for the first time, non-CsCl structures for 8-connected solids. The Nottingham group has probably discovered more new topologies for these systems than any other group in the world.
  • new porosity, gas storage and helicity in engineered nanomaterials showing high capacity and stable storage properties
  • the first Ni-Fe model complexes to mimic the Ni-Fe distance and stereochemistry of the active form of [NiFe]hydrogenases, coupled to the quantitative analysis of charge-delocalisation and redox non-innocence in Ni(III)-thiolate bonding, and
  • the development of the first functional NiFe complex that catalyses proton reduction to H2, thus mimicking [NiFe]hydrogenase activity by a model system

School of Chemistry

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email: chemistry-enquiries@nottingham.ac.uk