Werner van Zyl studied Chemistry in South Africa (BScHons, MSc) and earned a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry at Texas A&M University USA (1994-1998); he was a NWO postdoc at the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Twente, Netherlands (1999-2003). He was a staff member at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) before joining UKZN as a Senior Lecturer in 2008, where he is currently a Full Professor. He has published around 150 research papers (including a few good ones) and supervised 30 MSc and PhD students to graduation. He is a NRF rated researcher and regular reviewer for numerous journals.
Inorganic chemistry of transition metals, especially Group 11 metals: Cu, Ag, Au.
1.1 Dithiolate (especially dithiophosphonates and dithiocarbamates), phosphine, and cyanooxime ligands.
Project 1: Group 11 metal complexes with orthogonal ligand scaffolds: Group 11 metals (Cu, Ag, Au) has the ability to form metallophilic interactions and thus pursued to develop multifunctional materials. Heteronuclear complexes of the coinage metals (Cu, Ag, Au) are promising candidates to tune electronic and optical properties which are not readily accessed by their homometallic congeners. We study orthogonal ligands which are rationally designed to access heteronuclear coinage metal complexes and studied in terms of their unique properties. The aim is to prepare bifunctional ligands that contain both soft and hard donor atoms on the same ligand unit (orthogonal ligands) as they have the potential of providing different coordination modes to selectively synthesise heterometallic complexes in a predictable manner, we focus specifically on sulfur (soft) and nitrogen/oxygen (hard) donor atom sets. The S/N and S/O orthogonal ligand combination to form heterometallic complexes is very rare. Once the synthesis, characterization, and structural analysis are complete, the compound are subjected to a suite of investigations with regard to its optical, catalytic, and biological properties, and is complemented with theoretical investigations.
Project 2: Cellulose is regarded as the most abundant biopolymer and renewable material on earth and is known for its biodegradability, non-toxicity, and biocompatibility. We formed nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) from synthetic materials isolated from cigarette filters as well as natural materials isolated from melon seed shell. We formed bacterial cellulose and composites from a dialysis-free Kombucha-based process. The nanocellulose was used to both stabilise and reduce silver(I) to form silver nanoparticles (AgNPs); the composite NCC/AgNPs was investigated as a sensor in the detection of toxins using surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). We additionally demonstrated for the first time the preparation of luminescent cellulose paper through the embedding of a tetranuclear Cu(I) cluster by performing a chemical reaction directly on Schweizer’s reagent used as the inorganic solvent. Finally, we used NCC as a component in a wearable strain sensor based on electroconductive hydrogel composites for human motion detection.
Professor
Chemistry
vanzylw@ukzn.ac.za
031 260 3188
