Chemistry

Chemistry

Dr Sarah MastersDr Sarah Masters

Position

Senior Lecturer

Qualifications

BSc(Hons), PhD(University of Edinburgh)

Field of Study

Structural and Physical Chemistry

Room

736

Contact Details

Telephone: +64 3 364 2456
Fax: +64 3 364 2110
Email: sarah.masters@canterbury.ac.nz

Background

Sarah took a BSc(Hons) in Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, UK, followed by a PhD with Professor David Rankin, which she completed in 2000. She then undertook a Postdoc in the Rankin group, and managed the UK Gas Electron Diffraction service. She was awarded a Royal Society of Edinburgh / BP Personal Research Fellowship in 2005 to develop new methods for the structure determination of short-lived species. Sarah joined the Chemistry Department at Canterbury as a lecturer in January 2011.

Publications and Research Interests

See Masters Group Research webpages

Chemistry never ceases to amaze, and we are always reading about new technologies and products – materials, medicines, chemicals with special properties. To make their work efficient, chemists need to be able to predict the properties of target molecules, and to understand the routes to these molecules, and the rates at which reactions will take place. Techniques for determining molecular structures are therefore of primary importance.

Nowadays computers can predict structures of many molecules accurately, and they may also model gas-phase reactions. However, the programs use standard information from experimental gaseous structures, so new, accurate information from gas-phase experiments is always required. There is a mass of gaseous structural information for stable molecules, but information about short-lived or unstable species is much harder to obtain. Data are scarce, although they are essential for modelling reaction pathways and thus predicting rates of reactions. My research is geared towards providing this information. Research areas include the structure determination of short-lived species using combined FVP-GED techniques, and the structure determination of stable radicals.

Projects are available in the following areas. See our Research Page for more information.

 

Undergraduate Courses

  • CHEM114
  • CHEM243
  • CHEM343
  • ENCH241 (LAB)
  • CHEM281 (LAB)
  • CHEM382 (LAB)

 

Graduate Courses

  • CHEM400 level – Module "Gas Phase Structural Methods"
  • CHEM421

    Publications