William Wacholtz, PhD

Professor Emeritus
Inorganic Chemistry

Area of research:  Photochemical and Photophysical Studies of Inorganic and Organometallic Complexes.
Structure - Property Relationships in Mixed Ligand Complexes.

Techniques used:  A majority of our work involved the synthesis and isolation of new luminescent compounds followed by spectroscopic characterization: FTIR, FTNMR, UVVis, Emission and Luminescence Lifetime determination. X-ray diffraction studies were performed at Tulane University in collaboration with Dr. Joel Mague.

Several of my undergraduate students presented their investigations at National and Regional ACS meetings. I had 6 publications in peer-reviewed journals with UW Oshkosh undergraduate student co-authors.

The structure-property relationships in mixed ligand d10 metals (i.e. zinc and cadmium) employing dithiol and N,N-heterocyclic ligands were a recent focus in my laboratory.  Several unusual multinuclear compounds were obtained and shown to be luminescent.  Additionally, a novel luminescent trinuclear compound exhibiting multiple coordination geometries was isolated and characterized.  Studies of the factors that control five coordinate vs. four coordinate structures in these complexes are of additional interest. Photophysical measurements have shown that in some cases multiple emissions are possible from a molecule.

My research group also examined luminescent trigold(I) complexes.  Structural information shows that luminescent properties of the pyrazolato, indazolato, and pyridazinyl trigold(I) complexes are extremely sensitive to electron-withdrawing factors (ligand basicity) as well as the degree of supramolecular organization in the crystal.  An excitation-dependent emission was observed in one unsymmetric pyrazolato trigold(I) complex.

Curriculum vitae