Fall 2023
Left to right, Fall 2023: Christine Caputo, Dylan Stolba, CJ Wilson, Taylir Bullick, Katie Facteau
Photo credit: Aylin Aykanat.
SUSTAINABLE INORGANIC CHEMISTRY
The Caputo Group is interested in the design and synthesis of new organic and organometallic complexes that can act as catalysts or precursors for the development of new photoactive materials. Photochemical and electrochemical techniques are used to test for catalytic activity and spectroscopic methods are used to study the photophysical properties of new materials. Current research projects are focussed on using Earth-abundant metals to synthesize organometallic complexes for the catalytic conversion of small molecules (e.g. CO, CO2 etc.) into more valuable sustainable fuel precursors using sunlight.
LATEST NEWS
June 2023
Christine attended NERM 2023 in Boston to speak in the BRIC symposium and bumped into Dejun! It was so nice to catch up with you DJ.
July 2023
Peiyuan has successfully defended his PhD and is busy getting ready to move back to China where he will start working at a company that fabricates solar cells. Congrats Peiyuan and thanks for all your hard work.
June 2023
Nicholas Pollak spent the past few months working hard as a DOE SCGSR Fellow at Brookaven National Lab in the group of Dr. Mircea Cotlet doing time-resolved spectroscopy on his black phosphorus-carbon nitride materials. He arrived back in Durham, wrote and defended his PhD dissertation in the blink of an eye! Well done Dr. Pollak! The donut is well deserved.
August 2022
Dejun Dong successfully defended his PhD dissertation. Congrats DJ! Best of luck as you start your career in industry. We will miss you!
June 2022
Real proud of this guy - congrats to Michael Moheban on defending his MS today and answering some tough examiner questions. You killed it. Onto the next challenge!
December 2021
Our very own Ethan Jarvis successfully defends his PhD! Well done Ethan - after a few years in the Caputo Group onto new adventures!
May 2021
Many congrats to Nick Pollak and Hannah Bell who's paperon solar driven syngas synthesis using a BP/Co@C3N4 heterjunction was recently published in ChemPhotoChem! Check it out here!
August 2020.
The first PhD student from our group has successfully defended his thesis on Zoom! Congrats Zane! His family designed some chocolate bars to commemmorate the occasion.
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March 2019.
A really exciting result by Hannah Bell in the lab. So exciting, in fact that, she couldn't measure gas concentrations because the septum popped off! Bubbles are what we live for.
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Februrary 2019.
A few snowy days and some pretty colors in the lab make for a great photo shoot! Hopefully we get a few good looking crystal structures off this window sill...
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January 2019.
New year, new group, new research! The Caputo Group grows again - with three new grad students joining the lab in December. Welcome Taylir, Nick and Rashi! The group went out to the Portsmouth Escape Room and completed the room Westower's Study in just 36 minutes! We celebrated with pizza and beers. Nicely done team, now if only I could keep my eyes open for a nice picture....
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July 2018.
Many congrats to Charlie for successfully defending his MS this week. He's moving onto a PhD in Chemistry education at UNH. Nicely done!
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Summer 2018.
Josh Reynolds is back in the lab this summer making some new cobaloxime type complexes and Micheal Moheban is using his newly acquired Schlenk line techniques to make some boron containing carbene ligands.
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May 2018.
We are proud to announce that Portsmouth NH is hosting events during the Pint of Science festival for the first time! Come check out some science talks in a couple of Porstmouth pubs!
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August 2017.
Phew! It's been a busy summer so far. Christine, Zane and Anthony travelled to the Canadian Society for Chemistry Conference in Toronto, Ontario Canada to present some of the group's recent work. Anthony has now left UNH headed for sunnier shores - Australia for grad school - best of luck Anthony!
Miriam accomplished quite a lot during her 6 months in the Caputo Group, but has returned to Mexico to submit her PhD thesis. Good luck defending Miriam! Some group members participated in a Summer Research Skills Workshop put on by Physics Prof. Shawna Hollen. One of their tasks was to complete the XKCD "Up Goer Five" Challenge. Check out their stellar descriptions of our work here. Clear and concise, isn't it?
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January 2018.
We are thrilled to announce that our first publication is out....in a Physics journal! Many congrats to the Hollen group for publishing their STM analysis of black phosphorus and thanks for including us in this work. Click here to view the article.
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December 2017.
The group is growing! We are thrilled to welcome new graduate students Hannah Bell, Dejun Dong and Peiyuan Zhao to the group. Check out the Group Members page for their bios. Stay tuned for an updated group photo....
April 2017.
Spring semester is nearing it's end and that means Undergraduate Research Conference time! The Caputo Group was represented by three talented undergraduates, Anthony Lemieux, Erin Braker and Ian Smith, who presented posters at the UNH URC.
Ruby Cheetham, Ginny Church and Josh Reynolds (left to right) are brilliant high school students that have joined the lab and are getting tons of experience doing organic and inorganic synthesis. They really liven up the place. Thanks for all your hard work.
Less than a month to go until Fall semester starts!
March 2017.
Can't believe we are two months into 2017 already!
Spring semester is in full swing in the Caputo group. In mid-February we were excited to welcome Miriam Velasquez Hernandez, a visiting scholar on a CONTACyT fellowship from Mexico. Miriam had never seen snow before coming to NH! Well, we've only had three snow days so far and the boss thinks that New Hampshire needs to step up it's Winter Game! March Madness is just around the corner and Christine is hoping for some good lab rivalries to start up. In science news, Ethan thinks he's made his target fluorescent compound. Check it out below!
September 2016.
We are excited to welcome a new postdoc to the lab, Dr. Daniel Harrison. Dan is an expert in catalytic fluorination of organic compounds using organometallic chemistry. He will be working to synthesize a library of molecular catalysts with surface anchors for the EPSCoR DOE project in collaboration with Prof. Li's group.
August 2016.
As summer winds down, we say goodbye to our summer undergraduate student, Nathan Dow. This summer he was working on a project combing the Berda lab's expertise using RAFT polymerization techniques with our skills in the synthesis of carbon quantum dots. Nate returns to Swarthmore College in PA to finish up his degree. It was great having you around Nate! Thanks for all the hard work.
August 2016.
Great news! Our collaborative solar fuels project with Prof. Gonghu Li and Dr. Tijana Rajh (Argonne National Lab) has been funded by the DOE EPSCoR program. We will be studying CO2 reduction using molecular catalysts on surfaces. See the UNH Today story.
April 2016.
We have started working with some 2D materials. Prof. Hollen teaches us the 'Scotch tape method' for exfoliation of graphene.
June 2016.
Summer research is rolling along nicely as demonstrated by this good looking crystalline ligand isolated by Ethan. Time to make some metal complexes and grow some crystals! Christine attended the Canadian Society for Chemistry annual conference in Halifax. The group will be attending the NERM in October in Binghamton NY.
February 2016.
The Caputo Group was awarded a UNH CAMMI CIRC Grant to work in collaboration with Prof. Shawna Hollen and her group in the Physics department. Charlie will be studying 2D materials and nanoparticles using their brand new UHV AFM/STM instrument. See Research Projects for more info!
January 2016.
Chemglass Schlenk Lines and two MBraun Gloveboxes have been installed. Let the inert atmosphere synthesis begin!
