Department of Chemistry - University of Durham

Dr. Andrés E. Goeta

Senior Research Officer

Telephone: +44-(0)191-334-2102 (direct)

Fax: +44-(0)191-384-4737

Research Interests

My principal research interests focus on the study of structure-property correlations of materials with interesting and potentially applicable properties, in particular organic nonlinear optical, magnetic and inorganic solid state materials. To this aim, materials are mainly characterised by X-ray and neutron diffraction techniques. Current lines of research are described below:

Organic Compounds with Non-Linear Optical Properties

Studying the molecular organization of organic molecules is specially interesting due to the fact that crystal engineering, the ability to predict and/or direct the three-dimensional arrangement, can be used to tailor materials of biological or technological importance. My research focus on nitroanilines derivatives, which associate via intermolecular hydrogen bonds between the amino and nitro groups. These materials are recognised for their nonlinear optical properties, such as their second harmonic generation capability and their large microscopic hyperpolarizabilities. Discovering the nature and magnitude of the intermolecular interactions present in these systems and of their cooperative effects is crucial for the understanding of the relationship between molecular and macroscopic properties and for the design of new materials with specific functionalities. This is being carried out through the use of X-ray single crystal structure determination, neutron diffraction experiments, X- ray electron distribution studies and ab-initio theoretical calculations.

Magnetic Materials

Another line of research is the study of materials presenting magnetic properties with academic and potential industrial interest, e.g. molecular magnets, spin crossover compounds, organic ferromagnets, etc. The structural characterization of these materials is vitally important for the understanding of their behaviour and for the design of new materials showing enhanced properties. Variable temperature X-ray single crystal diffraction studies, neutron diffraction experiments, moun spin resonance, etc are among the techniques used to carry out this work.

Again, the emphasis of my research is on the study and understanding of the structural-property correlations for the design of new materials with enhanced applicable properties. Towards this aim is that we perform systematic variable temperature structural studies of many interesting compounds using the unique low temperature single crystal and powder diffraction facilities available at Durham. These comprise 3 area detector single crystal diffractometers allowing fast measurements between 30K-400K, a 4-circle single crystal diffractometer which allows very small samples to be studied between 10K-300K and a state-of-the-art high resolution powder diffractometer which allows measurements between 15K-1500K.

Postgraduate Course on 'X-Ray and Neutron Diffraction Methods' (PG4)

Full list of publications

Durham Chemical Crystallography Service

To the Durham Chemical Crystallography Laboratory Home Page

Last updated April 27, 2004