Since earning my Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1999, I have been lived and made my career in Japan. Japan is a safe and friendly place to do research, and Tohoku University has everything one needs to do cutting edge research and get a world-class education. My research interests involve the synthesis of new and useful inorganic materials as well as the activation of small molecules, such as carbon dioxide, in order to use them to make other materials. In my research, you can obtain experience in many areas of chemistry, including inorganic, organic, materials, analytical, and physical chemistries.
Coordination Chemistry, Inorganic Materials, carbon dioxide reduction, electrocatalysis, spectroelectrochemistry
Carbon dioxide is the major green house gas involved in global warming. My research has been focused on the electrocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide to prepare useful compounds, such as formic acid and methanol. When carbon dioxide coordinates to a metal coordination complex, it becomes easier to reduce. By carefully designing the ligands coordinated to the metal ions, the properties of the complex can change dramatically, and its ability to reduce small molecules can improve. In addition, through careful designing the building blocks, i.e., metal complexes and organic ligands, multi-dimensional frameworks exhibiting new and interesting properties can be prepared. Using a variety of techniques, including X-ray diffraction analysis, cyclic voltammetry, spectroelectrochemistry, etc., we study the properties of the frameworks and their ability to bind and reduce carbon dioxide.
1) "Observation and electric current control of a local spin in a single-molecule magnet." Komeda, T.; Isshiki, H.; Liu, J.; Zhang, Y.-F., Lorente, N.; Katoh, K.; Breedlove, B. K., Yamashita, M. Nat. Commun., 2, 217–223 (2011).
2) "Direct Observation of Photochromic Dynamics in Crystalline-state of an Organorhodium Dithionite Complex.", H. Nakai, M. Mizuno, T. Nishioka, N. Koga, K. Shiomi, Y. Miyano, M. Irie, B. K. Breedlove, I. Kinoshita, Y. Hayashi, Y. Ozawa, T. Yonezawa, K. Toriumi, K. Isobe, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. Eng., 45, 6473-6476 (2006).
3) "Synthesis of an electron pooling ligand based on triruthenium clusters and electrochemical reduction of CO2 by its Zinc(II) complex." Breedlove, B. K.; Takayama, D.; Ito, T. Chem. Lett., 33, 1624–1625 (2004).
