Polyoxometalate complexes, extending structural

In the preparation of materials, aqueous lanthanide and polyoxometalate chemistry is fraught with problems owing to multi-equilibria. Occluded water is often hard to remove and may preclude some applications. Additionally, in aqueous syntheses, different counterions complicate the issue as shown from our work and that of others. Therefore, it is very difficult to predict complexes and structures that will be formed in reactions carried out in water. We intend to branch into s)mtheses using organic soluble lacunary polyoxoanions and organic soluble or organometallic lanthanide precursors. We hope to establish reactions that can be depended on to produce complexes that can be reliably used in synthesis of extended materials. 

Polyoxometalates (POMs) are molecular nanosized polyanionic scaffolds, with multi-metal oxide structure and thus with a general motif being at the interface between molecular complexes and extended oxides.They offer well-defined models for the reactivity of metal bulk oxides, displaying, in addition, the typical tunability of the molecular species. 

---