We run systematic, curiosity-driven studies of main group elements, often with collaborators who have applied interests.
Tier II Canada Research Chair in Inorganic Polymers and Materials, University of Victoria
New classes of materials for green technologies, built from main group elements. Recent work includes PN cage polymers for high-temperature dielectric films and PN cage-based MOFs.
New concepts in metal coordination chemistry that make chemical synthesis more efficient, including pincer complexes of antimony and bismuth.
Tamina Kirsch (MSc 2025) won the 2026 medal at Dalhousie Chemistry for her work on trianionic NCN pincer complexes of antimony and bismuth. It is the third year in the last five that someone from the group has won the top thesis prize.
Awarded to Saurabh Chitnis. Read the announcement
PhD student Tyler Hannah received this national award from the Inorganic Division of the CSC. Only one student in Canada wins it each year.
Our new Bruker D8 Venture dual source single crystal diffractometer was installed.
Kate Roberge finished her summer term with a talk at the Inorganic Chemistry Exchange conference in Waterloo, Ontario.
With the Ragogna group, we showed area-selective deposition of PN cages on gold and copper surfaces. The paper is accepted in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
PhD student Anjali's first paper is on ChemRxiv. PN cage diols condensed with dichlorosilanes give hybrid phosphazene-organosiloxane polymers.
Tyler Hannah and Tamina Kirsch attended Convocation.
PhD students Joe Nazak and Will Howlett won presentation awards in the Main Group Symposium at CSC 2026 in Toronto.
May: Kate Roberge joined for the summer through the Inorganic Chemistry Exchange program, and Elise Bennett joined as a graduate student working on organometallic complexes of p-block elements.
April: Tyler Hannah defended his PhD and heads to the Crudden lab at Queen's University. Raul De La Garza Puente began a joint MSc with the Chitnis and Hof groups.
February: Maryam's work on PN cage polymers as high-temperature dielectric films was accepted in Advanced Functional Materials. Pinelopi Tsami won Best Poster at Graduate Student Research Day.
January: Will's dynamic bismuth pincer ligand chemistry appeared in Angewandte Chemie. Three undergraduates joined the lab.
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