Kim Dunbar
· Senior ProfessorTexas A&M University · Chemistry
Active 1983–2025
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About
Kim Dunbar is a Senior Professor at Texas A&M University College of Arts and Sciences, specializing in inorganic and bioinorganic chemistry. Her research spans synthetic, structural, and physical aspects of inorganic chemistry, utilizing tools such as spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography, magnetometry, electron microscopy, mass spectrometry, and electrochemistry. Her work includes the study of molecular magnets, conducting metal-organic solids, and spin-crossover compounds, focusing on molecule-based, metal-containing materials with conducting, optical, and magnetic properties. Dunbar's research involves designing molecules and materials with transition or lanthanide metal ions connected by organic radicals, leading to discoveries of materials exhibiting high conductivity, magnetic ordering, and single-molecule magnetism. She also explores cyanide chemistry of transition metals, synthesizing architectures with properties like charge-transfer spin transitions and photoinduced magnetic behavior. Additionally, her work addresses metals in medicine, developing compounds such as dirhodium and ruthenium agents for potential cancer therapies, and investigating their biological interactions and photodynamic applications. Dunbar's research extends to the study of anion-pi interactions in supramolecular chemistry. She holds a B.S. from Westminster College and a Ph.D. from Purdue University, and has received numerous awards and honors, including the ACS Award for Distinguished Service…
Research topics
- Physical chemistry
- Materials science
- Chemistry
- Physics
- Chemical physics
- Polymer chemistry
- Combinatorial chemistry
- Nanotechnology
- Optoelectronics
- Organic chemistry
Selected publications
Chemical Science · 2020 · 62 citations
Electrochemical stability and delocalization of states critically impact the functions and practical applications of electronically active polymers. Incorporation of a ladder-type constitution into these polymers represents a promising strategy to enhance the aforementioned properties from a fundamental structural perspective. A series of ladder-type polyaniline-analogous polymers are designed as models to test this hypothesis and are synthesized through a facile and scalable route. Chemical and…
Synthesis and exceptional operational durability of polyaniline-inspired conductive ladder polymers
Materials Horizons · 2023-01-01 · 22 citations
articleOpen access. Impressively, this polymer demonstrates unparalleled stability in strong acid and under harsh UV-irradiation, significantly surpassing commercial benchmarks like PEDOT:PSS and polyaniline. Moreover, it displays superior durability across numerous redox cycles as the active material in an electrochromic device and as the pseudocapacitive material in a supercapacitor device. This work provides structural design guidance for durable conductive polymers for long-term device operation.
Inorganic Chemistry · 2022-10-20 · 18 citations
articleA combination of inelastic neutron scattering (INS), far-IR magneto-spectroscopy (FIRMS), and Raman magneto-spectroscopy (RaMS) has been used to comprehensively probe magnetic excitations in Co(AsPh3)2I2 (1), a reported single-molecule magnet (SMM). With applied field, the magnetic zero-field splitting (ZFS) peak (2D′) shifts to higher energies in each spectroscopy. INS placed the ZFS peak at 54 cm–1, as revealed by both variable-temperature (VT) and variable-magnetic-field data, giving results…
Crystal Growth & Design · 2023-06-20 · 10 citations
articleCorrespondingThe initial use of N-naphthalidene-o-aminophenol (naphH2) chelate in heterometallic cluster chemistry has provided access to two chemically similar but structurally dissimilar [MnIII2Dy2(OMe)2(O2CR)6(naph)2] (R = Me (1), Ph (2)) compounds with rare linear (1) and zigzag (2) topologies, respectively, depending only upon the ancillary carboxylate groups. The “twisted” or “bent”-like structure of 2 has mostly altered the DyIII coordination geometry (square antiprismatic vs triangular dodecahedral i…
Inorganic Chemistry · 2022-07-27 · 10 citations
articleOpen accessVolatile lanthanide coordination complexes are critical to the generation of new optical and magnetic materials. One of the most common precursors for preparing volatile lanthanide complexes is the hydrate with the general formula Ln(hfac)3(H2O)x (x = 3 for La-Nd, x = 2 for Sm) (hfac = 1,1,1,5,5,5-hexafluoroacetylacetonato). We have investigated the synthesis of Ln(hfac)3(H2O)x using more environmentally sustainable mechanochemical approaches. Characterization of the products using Fourier trans…
Recent grants
NSF · $429k · 2006–2009
NSF · $640k · 2018–2023
NSF · $450k · 2010–2013
Frequent coauthors
- 224 shared
Rodolphe Clérac
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
- 175 shared
Hanhua Zhao
- 173 shared
A.V. Prosvirin
- 168 shared
Michael Shatruk
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
- 166 shared
F. Albert Cotton
- 154 shared
S. Ostrovsky
Moldova State University
- 152 shared
Andrey V. Prosvirin
- 152 shared
Sophia I. Klokishner
Institute of Applied Physics
Labs
Dunbar Research GroupPI
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