Werner Urland (born 13 April 1944) is a German chemist whose name is imprinted in the pioneering implementation of the Angular Overlap Model (AOM: a specific paradigm for accounting metal ions in complexes or crystals ) for the interpretation of optical and magnetic properties of rare-earth coordination compounds. This approach receives a renewed value in the context of the vogue around the lanthanide-based new materials, such as achieving magnets at molecular scale, or designing new phosphor materials.
Biography Werner Urland was born in Berlin on 13 April 1944. Between 1963 and 1968 he studied and graduated in chemistry in Giessen, Germany. The interval 1968-1971 was dedicated to the work of a doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Professor R. Hoppe, on ternary oxides of noble metals. The PhD stage incorporated a scholarship at University College in London, in the group of Dr. Malcolm Gerloch under the supervision of Professor Lord Jack Lewis (Jack Lewis, Baron Lewis of Newnham, where the acquaintance with the magnetic properties and specific models of coordination compounds had defined a turning point in his career. The following post-doctoral stage (1971-1974) in preparative solid-state chemistry and the return to England, at Cambridge, in the theory group directed by Prof. A. D. Buckingham, contoured an original composition of scientific interests, at the confluence of applied chemistry with the theoretical insight, aiming for understanding and predicting useful properties. Assimilating the different formation sources, Werner Urland contoured his original perspective in the magnetochemistry of rare earth compounds, the domain delineated by his habilitation treatise (1975-1980). Between 1982 and 1986 he occupied a research position at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart. Since 1986 he has been appointed professor in Hanover, where he acted till his retirement in 2007, on a chair dedicated to special topics of inorganic chemistry. In 1996 he declined an invitation to occupy a position as professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Vienna. Since 2011, Werner Urland occupies a senior researcher position on grants, in the group of theoretical and computational chemistry of Professor Claude Daul, at University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Presently, Werner Urland is dealing with setting up an institute in Muralto/Locarno, Switzerland, with the help of the "Fondazione Sciaroni", dedicated to theoretical approach of material sciences and property design, thus supporting experimental work by universities and industries.
Activity
Preparative solid state and coordination chemistry In the branch dedicated to solid state chemistry, Werner Urland et al. synthesized and characterized structurally, by X-ray crystallography, several lanthanide-chalcogenide systems with unusual anionic structures, such as PrSe2, PrSe1.9−x, CeSe1.9−x NdSe1.9 or more complex compositions, such as chalcogenide-silicates like Nd2 SeSiO4 like M 4X 3 [Si2 O 7] (M = Ce - Er; X = S, Se) The crystal structures of prototypic chalcogenides of trivalent lanthanides, like Ln2Se3 (Ln=Sm, Tb, Ho) were resolved., treating also their polymorphic manifestations and the electronic structure. Other solid phase systems such as lanthanide aluminium halides, LnAl3X12 (with Ln = lanthanide trivalent ions in the La-Ho series and X= Cl, Br) were considered as synthetic and structural problems. Another area of Werner Urland's research was contoured around the special properties of condensed systems, such as superconductivity of mixed oxide compounds,
or ionic conductivity and dynamics of sodium and lanthanide ions in crystals like Na+/Ln3+-ß"-Al2O3 The same systems received attention also in the respect of their magnetic properties, in relation with the determinant structural factors. Among other approached special properties, one may mention the treatment of bipolaron absorption in Ba1−xKxBiO3 and Ba0.6K0.4−xBiO3 materials.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
