Strauss Group – Professor Product Portal

Professor Steven Strauss

The Strauss Group has been among the leaders in the synthesis and applications of new superweak anions for the past three decades. Superweak anions (a term coined by the Strauss Group in 1998 in connection with an ACS Symposium on weakly-coordinating anions), by definition, are the conjugate bases of the strongest possible (real or hypothetical) superacids, and they have been used to generate metal cations in condensed phases that are virtually as reactive as the corresponding gas-phase cations.

Using anions, such as B₁₂F₁₂²⁻, we have prepared and studied nonclassical metal carbonyls such as Cu(CO)⁴⁺ and Ag(CO)²⁺, metal complexes of "noncoordinating" solvents such as Ag(CH₂Cl₂)³⁺, solid-state materials that are not microporous yet exhibit latent porosity, and lithium salts that catalyze carbon–carbon bond forming reactions in hydrocarbon solvents and show promise as thermally-stable alternatives to lithium-ion battery electrolytes such as LiPF₆.

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