Finding novel materials for practical devices

While that approach has guided the development of valuable new materials, they’ve primarily been organic compounds, notes Heather Kulik PhD ’09, an assistant professor of chemical engineering. Kulik focuses instead on inorganic compounds — in particular, those based on transition metals, a family of elements (including iron and copper) that have unique and useful properties. In those compounds — known as transition metal complexes — the metal atom occurs at the center with chemically bound arms, or ligands, made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, or oxygen atoms radiating outward.