Welcome to the Curnow Research Group
Left to right:Tim Huber, Owen Curnow, Michael Holmes, Ruhamah Yunis, Kelvin Walst
About us:
In our research website pages you will find details of our research group. We are based in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Our group is currently focussed on developing an entirely new class of ionic liquids (ILs) based on amino-stabilised cyclopropenium cations. This involves the synthesis of new cations with a particular interest in those that have low melting points and viscosity. ILs have a vast range of potential applications: battery electrolytes, novel solvents, chiral solvents, fuel cells, dye-sensitised solar cells, carbon dioxide absorption, hydrogen storage, chromatography (as a non-volatile support), catalysis etc. Our group aims to design ILs that have properties useful for particular applications.
Latest news:
- Our first publication on ionic liquids has now appeared in Chemical Communications and is titled “Triaminocyclopropenium salts as ionic liquids” by Owen J. Curnow, Douglas R. MacFarlane and Kelvin J. Walst. It can be found at: http://xlink.rsc.org/?doi=C1CC13979G.
- For a look at how ionic liquids can be used to make cellulose composites, see “A critical review of all-cellulose composites” by Tim Huber, Jörg Müssig, Owen Curnow, Shusheng Pang, Simon Bickerton and Mark P. Staiger in the Journal of Materials Science: http://www.springerlink.com/content/d01h2574911r7g89/.
Group vacancies:
We do not curently have any funding to support either Postdocs, or PhD students. However we are actively looking for prospective PhD students to start in 2011 who should therefore apply for a University scholarship to fund their studies. Please contact Owen Curnow by email if this is the case.
Upcoming events:
- See the AAILS website for conferences: http://www.aails.com/index.asp