Research Interests

Research in the Cronin Group is focussed on the potential of complex chemical systems derived from non-biological building blocks to have a major impact on our fundamental understanding of the interplay of chemical systems and to revolutionise modern technologies. To this end the Cronin group works within three major research "themes" of Synthesis and Self Assembly, Molecular Devices and Complex Chemical Systems. The Cronin Group believes in a synergistic approach to research with research themes and projects reinforcing each other to enable fundamental advances to be made.

This research feeds into a number of major applications being investigated in the Cronin group with the intention of realising the real-world benefits of the fundamental science being conducted. These applications range from developing materials for solar fuel devices to producing potential drug and drug delivery candidates.

This Research would not be possible without the wide range of state of the art research equipment routinely used by the Cronin Group. Having recently moved into a purpose built facility within the School of Chemistry at Glasgow university the Cronin Group is at the forefront of developing cutting edge synthetic and analytical techniques for the study of complex inorganic Chemical systems. These advances include the use of low temperature (cryospray) ESI MS techniques to observe chemical transformations and highly reactive intermediate reaction structures and using purpose built flow reactors to study the self-assembly of polyoxometalate systems.

Publication Highlights

• D. Long, E. Burkholder, and L. Cronin (2007). Chem. Soc. Rev. 36, 105-121. "Polyoxometalate Clusters, Nanostructures and Materials: From Self Assembly to Designer Materials and Devices"
• Y. F. Song, D. L. Long, L. Cronin (2007). Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 46, 3900-39004 "Noncovalently connected frameworks with nanoscale channels assembled from a tethered polyoxometalate-pyrene hybrid"
• G. T. Cooper, G. N. Newton, P. Kogerler, D. L. Long, L. Engelhardt, M. Luban, L. Cronin (2007). Angew Chem. Int. Ed. 46, 1340-1344. "Structural and compositional control in {M-12} cobalt and nickel coordination clusters detected magnetochemically and with cryospray mass spectrometry"
• A. D. C. Parenty, Y. F. Song, C. J. Richmond, L. Cronin (2007). Org. Letts., 9, 2253-2256. "A general and efficient five-step one-pot procedure leading to nitrogen-bridgehead heterocycles containing an imidazole ring"
• N. McMillan, L. V. Smith, J. M. de la Fuente, A. D. C. Parenty (2007). Chem. Commun., 2581-2583. "Incorporation of N-heterocyclic cations into proteins with a highly directed chemical modification"

Research groups

• Complex Chemistry

Selected publications

Zhan, C. et al. (2017) A metamorphic inorganic framework that can be switched between eight single-crystalline states. Nature Communications, 8, 14185. (doi: 10.1038/ncomms14185) (PMID:28194009) (PMCID:PMC5316803)

Dragone, V., Sans, V., Henson, A. B. , Granda, J. M. and Cronin, L. (2017) An autonomous organic reaction search engine for chemical reactivity. Nature Communications, 8, 15733. (doi: 10.1038/ncomms15733) (PMID:28598440) (PMCID:PMC5472751)

Xuan, W., Pow, R., Long, D.-L. and Cronin, L. (2017) Exploring the molecular growth of two gigantic half-closed polyoxometalate clusters {Mo180} and {Mo130Ce6}. Angewandte Chemie (International Edition), 56(33), pp. 9727-9731. (doi: 10.1002/ange.201702957) (PMID:28508585) (PMCID:PMC5600119)

Boyd, T., Mitchell, S. G., Gabb, D., Long, D.-L. , Song, Y.-F. and Cronin, L. (2017) POMzites: a family of zeolitic polyoxometalate frameworks from a minimal building block library. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 139(16), pp. 5930-5938. (doi: 10.1021/jacs.7b01807) (PMID:28368582) (PMCID:PMC5423706)

All publications

List by: Type | Date

Teaching

• Level-3 Bioinorganic Chemistry
• Level-4 Metals in Medicine
• Level-4 Advanced Bioinorganic Chemistry and Biomaterials.

Awards

DPhil (York)

Selected Recent Talks

• "Engineering reversible electron transfer reactions within polyoxometalate nanoscale cages", Invited talk, 234th ACS Meeting in Boston, August 2007
• "Synthesis of triangular magnetic tubes" Workshop on quantum spin tubes, IMR, Tohoku, July 2007
• "From Polyoxometalate-based building blocks to Functional Nanoclusters and Frameworks", Invited lecture, Cost D40 Dublin, May 2007
• "Molecular design approaches to self assembly: From ligand design to functional nanoclusters and frameworks". Invited lecture, Leiden, April 2007
• "Design of novel N-heterocyclic frameworks, cations and superstructures as bio-actives and new materials". Invited lecture, Bayer Crop Science, March 2007

External Appointments & Positions

• EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow (2006-2011)
• Visiting Professor, University of Versailles (2006)