Research

The main research direction of our group is the development of molecular systems, which physicochemical properties can be reversibly changed by action of light. Our specially designed coordination compounds comprise an inorganic carrier of property – a metal ion surrounded by auxiliary ligands, and a photoactive organic unit – a photoisomerizable ligand. In a properly designed system, a reversible photoreaction on a photoisomerizable ligand is capable to tune the electronic structure of a coordinated metal ion. This allows us to use the light to change reversibly the physicochemical properties of advanced photoresponsive materials based on molecular switches.

Further research directions involve the construction of metallosupramolecular magnetic networks: A specially designed multi-coordinating ligand systems are used to obtain magnetic materials with novel properties.

In order to achieve our goals a strongly interdisciplinary approach comprising synthetic inorganic and organic chemistry, photochemistry, a broad range of spectroscopic methods, and theoretical calculations is used.