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           COLLOQUIUM OF THE COMPUTATIONAL MATERIALS SCIENCE CENTER
                              College of Science
                       (CDS Department CSI 898-Sec 001)
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  Buckyball Maracas: Chemical and Electrochemical Properties of 
                 Endohedral Fullerenes

                      Luis Echegoyen,
         Clemson University, Department of Chemistry, 
           Hunter Laboratories, Clemson, SC 29634

Endohedral fullerenes are fullerenes that have additional atoms, 
molecules, or clusters enclosed within their inner spheres. 
Electrochemical properties of endohedral fullerenes exhibit very
 unusual behavior, with some adducts showing electrochemically 
reversible behavior while others are always irreversible. Endohedral 
fullerenes display extremely low bandgaps. In search for donor-acceptor 
dyads capable of photoinduced charge separation, being thus suitable for 
constructing organic photovoltaic elements, in my group we studied 
trimetallic nitrides clusters M3N in C88, C78, C82 and C84 
(M= Gd, Pr, Nd, Ce and La). Photoinduced charge separation leads to 
intramolecular electron transfer and the resulting charge-separated 
states are longer lived than those for the identical analogues 
containing one C60 as the acceptor group, thus indicating that 
these novel endohedrals are potentially useful as acceptor groups 
in photovoltaic applications. 

                        Monday, April 6, 2009
                             4:30 pm
                     Room 301, Research I, Fairfax Campus

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 PM.
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Find the schedule at www.cmasc.gmu.edu/seminar/schedule.html
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