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Functional Inorganic Materials for Energy and Biomineralization

Neilson Group: new materials and methodologies from kinetic control

Our research revolves around understanding and controlling the formation of materials, their structure and their properties, i.e., materials design. We focus on manipulating and understanding local chemical environments and their influences on electronic properties in new materials, such as magnetism. The overarching theme is correlating structural details of materials with their functional behavior in the development of new and efficient materials of relevance to energy conversion and conservation, for example, new hard magnetic materials and semiconductors for solar energy conversion. The approach is based on asking the question: How does one selectively position (and then find) atoms within a bulk solid? The same overarching chemical perspectives apply to the area of biomineralization as well, particularly to that of bone remodeling. This is an interdisciplinary problem fundamentally rooted in inorganic chemistry, and with profound implications for human and animal disease. Many of the problems we face are intrinsically interdisciplinary as our chemistry sits at the interface with both physics and biology.

Curriculum Vitæ as a PDF

News and Updates:

Selected publications

kinetic A. J. Martinolich, J. R. Neilson, Towards Reaction-By-Design: Achieving Kinetic Control of Solid State Chemistry with Metathesis (Perspective). Chem. Mater., (2017), 29(2), 479-489. [doi]

defect A. E. Maughan, A. M. Ganose, M. M. Bordelon, D. O. Scanlon, and J. R. Neilson, Defect tolerance to intolerance in the vacancy-ordered double perovskite semiconductors Cs2SnI6 and Cs2TeI6, J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2016), 138(27), 8453-8464. [doi]


Recent Group Photos:
folded
June, 2019. From left to right: Dominic Asebiah, Thinh Tran, Adrienne Smiley, Guest, Chris Rom, Alex Koegel, Crystal Lundgren, Emily Storck, Autumn Peters. Seated: Jamie and Guest.

Archived Group Photos  

Contact:

mug

Prof. James R. Neilson
email: james.neilson - at - colostate.edu
phone: 970-491-2958 || lab phone: 970-491-3825
office: Main Chemistry C229C
labs: Chemistry C208 and C214
department page: http://www.chem.colostate.edu/people/jrn/

mailing address:
Colorado State University
Department of Chemistry
1872 Campus Delivery
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1872

orcid id: 0000-0001-9282-5752