Author: kevink

Latest News!

Post author By kevink
Post date September 1, 2018

September 2018

Kevin is promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure! This couldn’t have been possible without great students and the support of Raina, Charlotte, and Samantha.

August 2018

Kevin, AB, and William gave talks at the 256th ACS National Meeting & Exposition in Boston! AB talked about his work on resolving the role of hydrazine during the synthesis of SrTiO₃ nanocrystals and William presented his recent work on spin dynamics in Cr-doped SrTiO₃ nanocrystals. Kevin ended the talks by the group on Fumi’s results of Mn²⁺-doping in decameric CdS nanoclusters.

The group is also enjoying the new labs in the Physical Sciences Building, which we moved into at the end of July.

June 2018

We welcome summer undergraduate research students Anand Ode and Ekeoma Ibe. Anand is an undergraduate at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Ekeoma just finished her Associates degree from Holyoke Community College and is headed to UMass Lowell in the Fall to start her degree in Biotechnology. Welcome to the MIMC lab!

Congratulations to Fumi for his paper on site-specific doping of Mn²⁺ ions into CdS-based semiconductor nanoclusters. The paper was accepted in Chemistry of Materials.

March 2018

Winter is still alive and well in New England. On the bright side, Kevin will be giving a talk at the National ACS Meeting in New Orleans on Fumi’s research on controlling the speciation of dopants in metal thiophenolate clusters!

January 2018

The group welcomes new first year student Enes Buz who will be working on colloidal aliovalent ZnO nanocrystals. Enes received his Master’s degree in Chemistry from Koç University in Turkey. Welcome Enes!

August 2017

Kevin and colleagues from chemistry and chemical engineering have received an NSF MRI award to acquire a modern powder X-ray diffractometer with in situ capabilities! Read more about it here.

Kevin has been awarded an NSF EAGER award to study aliovalent magnetic semiconductor nanocrystals! Click here to read the NSF award abstract.

July 2017

The group celebrated a great first half of 2017 at Kevin’s house for a bbq. Looking forward to finishing 2017 with some momentum!

June 2017

Dongming Zhou defended his thesis entitled, “Aliovalent Dopants in ZnO Nanocrystals: Synthesis to Electronic Structure.” Congrats Dongming! Group PhD #3!

April 2017

Kevin and Emily McLauren (Kansas State University) organized a great symposium at the ACS National Meeting and Exposition in San Francisco entitled, “Inorganic Nanomaterials: Structure and Function in 0, 1, and 2 Dimensions.” We are grateful to the Division of Inorganic Chemistry (ACS), Chemistry of Materials, OLIS, Strem, Kansas State University and UMass Amherst for sponsoring the symposium.

March 2017

Collaborative effort that transforms SrTiO₃ nanocrystals from a freestanding colloidal suspension to transferable nanoarrays sans lithography has been accepted in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. Read more in the Publications page!

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Since joining UMass Amherst

Post author By kevink
Post date August 21, 2018

19. Zhou, Dongming; Wang, Peijian; Roy, Christopher R.; *Barnes, Michael D.; *Kittilstved, Kevin R. “Direct Evidence of Surface Charges in n-Type Al-doped ZnO” 2018, 122, 18596–18602. (view).

18. Kato, Fumitoshi; *Kittilstved, Kevin R. “Site-Specific Doping of Mn²⁺ in a CdS-based Molecular Cluster” Chem. Mater., 2018, 30, 4720–4727 (view).

17. Brozek, Carl; Zhou, Dongming; Liu, Hongbin; Li, Xiaosong; Kittilstved, Kevin R.; *Gamelin, Daniel R., “Soluble Supercapacitors: Large and Reversible Charge Storage in Colloidal Iron-Doped ZnO Nanocrystals” Nano Lett., 2018, 18, 3297–3302 (view).

16. Debnath, Sashi; Boyle, Connor; Zhou, Dongming; Wong, Bryan; Kittilstved, Kevin; *Venkataraman, D., “Persistent Radical Anion Polymers Based on Naphthalenediimide and a Vinylene Spacer” RSC Adv., 2018, 8, 14760-14764 (view, open access!).

15. Liu, Y.; Page, Z.A.; Zhou, D.; Duzhko, V.V.; Kittilstved, K.R.; *Emrick, T.; *Russell, T.P. “Chemical Stabilization of Perovskite Solar Cells with Functional Fulleropyrrolidines” ACS Cent. Sci., 2018, 4, 216-222 (view).

14. Eyer, G.P.; Kittilstved, K.R.; *Andrew, T.L. “Anomalous Paramagnetism in Closed-Shell Molecular Semiconductors” J. Phys. Chem. C, 2017, 121, 24929–24935 (view).

13. Huang, H.; Sklute, E.C.; Lehuta, K.A.; Kittilstved, K.R.; Glotch, T.; Liu, M.; *Khalifah, P.G. “Influence of thermal annealing on free carrier concentration in (GaN)_1–x(ZnO)_x semiconductors” J. Phys. Chem. C, 2017, 121, 23249–23258 (view).

12. Lehuta, Keith A.; Haldar, Anubhab; Zhou, Dongming; *Kittilstved, Kevin R. “Spectroscopic study of the reversible chemical reduction and reoxidation of substitutional Cr ions in Sr₂TiO₄” Inorg. Chem., 2017, 56, 9177-9184 (view).

11. Wang, Jiaying; Choudhary, Satyan; Harrigan, William L.; Crosby, Alfred J.; Kittilstved, Kevin R.; *Nonnenmann, Stephen S. “Transferable Memristive Nanoribbons Comprising Solution-Processed Strontium Titanate Nanocubes” ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 2017, 9, 10847–10854. (view)

10. Lehuta, Keith A.; *Kittilstved, Kevin R. “Reversible control of the chromium valence in chemically reduced Cr-doped SrTiO₃ bulk powders” Dalton Trans., 2016, 45, 10034-10041. (view)
New Talent: Americas special themed issue

9. Zhou, Dongming; *Kittilstved, Kevin R. “Reversible electron trapping on Fe³⁺ sites in photodoped ZnO colloidal nanocrystals” Chem. Commun., 2016, 52, 9101-9104. (view article)
Invited contribution to the 2016 Emerging Investigators themed collection. view biography

8. Harrigan, William L.; Michaud, Samuel E.; Lehuta, Keith A.; *Kittilstved, Kevin R. “Tunable electronic structure and surface defects in chromium-doped colloidal SrTiO_3-? nanocrystals” Chem. Mater., 2016, 28, 430-433. (view)

7. Pittala, Swamy; Mortelliti, Michael J.; Kato, Fumitoshi; *Kittilstved, Kevin R. “Substitution of Co²⁺ in small CdS-based molecular clusters” Chem. Commun., 2015, 51, 17096-17099. (view)

6. Li, Longyu; Yuan, Conghui; Zhou, Dongming; Ribbe, Alexander E.; Kittilstved, Kevin R.; *Thayumanavan, Sankaran. “Utilizing Reversible Interactions in Polymeric Nanoparticles to Generate Hollow Metal-Organic Nanoparticles” Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2015, 54, 12991-12995. (view)

5. Pittala, Swamy; *Kittilstved, Kevin R. “Cation exchange in small ZnS and CdS molecular analogs” Inorg. Chem., 2015, 54, 5757-5767. (view)

4. Zhou, Dongming; *Kittilstved, Kevin R. “Control over Fe³⁺ speciation in colloidal ZnO nanocrystals” J. Mater. Chem. C, 2015, 3, 4352-4358. (view)
Journal of Materials Chemistry C named Hot Paper

3. Yamagata, H.; Maxwell, D. S.; Fan, J.; Kittilstved, K. R.; Briseno, A. L.; Barnes, M.D.; *Spano, F. C. “HJ-aggregate Behavior of Crystalline 7,8,15,16-tetraazaterrylene (TAT): Introducing A New Design Paradigm for Organic Materials” J. Phys. Chem. C, 2014, 118, 28842-28854. (view)

2. Bo, Shou-Hang; Veith, Gabriel M.; Saccomanno, Michael R.; Huang, Huafeng; Burmistrova, Polina V.; Malingowski, Andrew C.; Sacci, Robert L.; Kittilstved, Kevin R.; Grey, Clare P.; *Khalifah, Peter G. “Thin-Film and Bulk Investigations of LiCoBO₃ as a Li-Ion Battery Cathode” ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 2014, 6, 10840-10848. (view)

1. Lehuta, Keith A.; *Kittilstved, Kevin R. “Speciation of Cr(III) in intermediate phases during the sol-gel processing of Cr-doped SrTiO₃ powders” J. Mater. Chem. A, 2014, 2, 6138-6145 (view)
Invited contribution for the 2014 Emerging Investigator themed issue

GROUP

Kevin Kittilstved

Post author By kevink
Post date July 20, 2018

Department of Chemistry
University of Massachusetts Amherst
374 Lederle Graduate Research Tower
710 North Pleasant Street
Amherst MA 01003
Office: Physical Sciences Building 177
Synthesis Lab: Physical Sciences Building 130
MCD Lab: Goessmann 272 & 273
Student Offices: Physical Sciences Building 130A
kittilstved@chem.umass.edu
Ph: 413/545-6096
Student office: 413/545-6090

Positions and Education
2018, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
2011, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
2010, Research Associate, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
2006 – 2010, Post-doctoral Researcher, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
2006, Ph.D. Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
2001, B. S. Chemistry, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA

Awards and Honors
2016, Emerging Investigator (Chemical Communications)
2015, National Science Foundation CAREER Award
2014, Emerging Investigator (Journal of Materials Chemistry A)

Twitter | ResearcherID | ORCiD | Google Scholar

GROUP

Current Group

Post author By kevink
Post date March 8, 2018

March 2017
Row 1 = Fumi, Jillian, Dongming, Kevin;
Row 2 = William, Abdullah “AB”, Chris, Haneen

Graduate Students:
Enes Buz (1st yr, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey)
Jillian Denhardt (2nd yr, St. Michael’s College, Colchester, VT)
William Harrigan (6th yr, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY)
katoFumitoshi Fumitoshi Kato (5th yr, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA)
Haneen Mansoor (2nd yr, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan)
Abdullah Muhammad (2nd yr, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan)

Undergraduate Students (not pictured):
Christopher Roy (class of 2018)
Nicholas Russo (class of 2018)

TEACHING

Teaching

Post author By kevink
Post date March 8, 2018

Spring 2011 – CHEM 546: Advanced Inorganic Chemistry
Fall 2011 – CHEM 546: Advanced Inorganic Chemistry
Fall 2012 – CHEM 546: Advanced Inorganic Chemistry
Fall 2013 – CHEM 546: Advanced Inorganic Chemistry
Spring 2014 – CHEM 112: General Chemistry II
Fall 2014 – CHEM 341: Inorganic Chemistry
Spring 2015 – CHEM 649: Physical Methods in Inorganic Chemistry
Fall 2015 – CHEM 341: Inorganic Chemistry
Fall 2016 – CHEM 341: Inorganic Chemistry
Spring 2017 – CHEM 342: Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory
Fall 2017 – CHEM 341: Inorganic Chemistry
Spring 2018 – CHEM 342: Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory

*All course materials can be accessed by registered students through moodle.

Publications

REU

Post author By kevink
Post date January 31, 2018

To apply to work in the Kittilstved lab over the summer of 2018, please follow the link to the following Google Form here.

GROUP

Group Alumni

Post author By kevink
Post date November 20, 2017

Alumni (graduate):
Keith Lehuta (Ph.D., 2016: Honeywell)
Swamy Pittala (Ph.D., 2016: Process Engineer at Intel)
Dongming Zhou (Ph.D., 2017: Postdoctoral Researcher at Zhejiang University)
Jenileigh Harris (M.Sc., 2014: High School Chemistry Teacher at Pioneer Valley Performing Arts)
Kim-Ngan Hua (M.Sc., 2013)

Visiting Scholars:
Eva Belmonte Sánchez (Universidad de Almeria)

Alumni (undergraduate):
Chris Coakley (class of 2012)
Tom Foley (class of 2011: Boston University – Law School)
Jesse Guillet (class of 2012: Graduate student @ Boston University – Chemistry)
Robert Nathan (class of 2012)
Stan Najmr (class of 2013: Graduate student @ UPenn – Chemistry)
Bill Rowley (class of 2011: Graduate student @ University of Nevada-Reno – Chemistry)
Benjamin Satterfield (class of 2015: Chem Eng)
Renita Thim (visiting international student: Spring 2011)
Austin Virtue (class of 2013: Graduate student @ Univ. of Maryland – Chemistry)
Gino Dos Santos (class of 2014)
Niall Coogan (visiting international student: Spring 2014)
Matthew Yee (class of 2018)
Anton El Khoury (class of 2017)
Michael Mortelliti (class of 2016, Graduate student @ University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill)
Samuel E. Michaud (class of 2016, Graduate student @ University of Michigan)

Old Group Photos

group2016 January 2016 (from left to right: Swamy, Peter, Elaine, Chris, Michael, William, Fumi, Sam, Steven, Keith, and Dongming)

March 2014 (from left to right: Niall, Dongming, Sam, Jenileigh, William, Swamy, Gino, Fumi, Keith, Michael, Kevin)

Summer 2013 (left to right: William, Jenileigh, Dongming, Kevin, Keith, Swamy)

: summer 2012

Spring 2012 (left to right: Dongming, Kim, Keith, Kevin, Swamy)

Spring 2011 Group

Spring 2011 (left to right: Jesse, Tom, Kim, Renita, Stan, Bill)

Research

Post author By kevink
Post date July 26, 2017

Research in the Kittilstved group is focused on developing synthetic methods to prepare novel inorganic materials for renewable-energy applications and spin-based technologies. The materials we study are primarily inorganic semiconductors and related molecular clusters with unique electronic structures that are responsive to external perturbations. We utilize sophisticated spectroscopic techniques including electronic absorption, steady-state and time-resolved luminescence, high-resolution Fourier transform and magneto-optical spectroscopies to investigate these electronic structures.

Our research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Publications

archived news

Post author By kevink
Post date June 13, 2017

December 2016

The group welcomed three new first year students to the group! Welcome Jillian Denhardt, Muhammad Abdullah, and Haneen Mansoor!

November 2016

Congrats Keith! Keith Lehuta successfully defended his PhD thesis on controlling and interrogating the dopant/defect oxidation states in SrTiO₃-based materials. Check out his work in the Publications page!

August 2016

Kevin presented a “hot topic” talk at the Colloidal Semiconductor Nanocrystal GRC on “Aliovalent Magnetic Dopants in Oxide Semiconductors.”

Summer REU students Hamdy and Patricia rocked it at the REU Poster Session! They were studying the conversion of clusters to quantum dots at low temperatures and observed some very cool results and we look forward to seeing walking around the UMass Amherst campus in Fall 2017!!

REU_poster_2016

July 2016

Our latest papers are included in two special themed issues of the RSC: 2016 Emerging Investigators of Chemical Communications and New Talent: Americas 2016 in Dalton Transactions!

June 2016

The group welcomes Patricia and Hamdy from Springfield Technical Community College to work with Fumi on molecular clusters. Looking forward to working with these motivated researchers!

April 2016

Keith’s paper on controlling the chromium oxidation state in Cr-doped SrTiO₃ has been published in Dalton Transactions! Check out the publications tab read more.

March 2016

Congratulations to Swamy Pittala on successfully defending his PhD! Best of luck at Intel in Hillsboro!!
Dongming’s paper on the reversible trapping of electrons on Fe³⁺ sites in ZnO quantum dots has been accepted! Check out the publications tab read about this awesome result!

February 2016

The application for the NSF-funded research experience from May 30th to August 6th is open! Students currently in their 1st year of the STCC SSA program click here to apply!

January 2016

We welcomed Elaine Liu to the MIMC lab. Elaine is a graduate of Oberlin College and will be working on metal benzenechalcogenate clusters.
William, Sam and Keith’s paper on the tunability of oxygen-related defects in pure and Cr-doped SrTiO₃ colloidal nanocrystals has been accepted for publication in Chemistry of Materials! Check out the publications tab for more.

December 2015

We celebrated Fumi passing his 2nd year exam, Swamy’s data defense, and a productive 3 months in our lab by visiting graduate student, Eva Belmonte Sanchez from the Universidad de Almeria.

October 2015

Swamy, Michael and Fumi’s article demonstrating a clear correlation of the metal ion exchange rate and the ligand dynamics in CdS-based molecular clusters has been accepted in Chemical Communications! Click here to read more.

August 2015

The Daily Hampshire Gazette has written a story on the NSF CAREER award that includes cool pictures of some quantum dots, the broader impact of the research with regional community college students and our very own undergraduate researcher Michael Mortelliti! Click here to access the article (you may need to register for a free subscription).

July 2015

Kevin has received an NSF CAREER award to study the kinetics and thermodynamics of molecular clusters that mimic the surfaces of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals! Read more about the award here.

June 2015

Kevin presented William’s work at NERM 2015 on the campus of Ithaca College.
Swamy’s first paper is published as a full article in Inorganic Chemistry! Read more about his work on metal ion exchange reactions involving benzenethiolate clusters in the Publications tab.

March 2015

Dongming’s paper on the synthesis and electronic structure of Fe³⁺-doped ZnO has been accepted to the J. Mater. Chem. C! Just in time for Kevin to talk about it at the ACS meeting in Denver.

December 2014

Some very interesting variable-temperature absorption spectroscopy of an unusual organic chromophore collected on our high-resolution Fourier Transform absorption spectrometer has been published in J. Phys. Chem. C with colleagues Alex Briseno, Mike Barnes and Frank Spano (Temple). Check it out in the Publications tab.

August 2014

Kevin gave an invited talk in the special symposium on “The Chemistry of Inorganic Nanocrystals and Clusters” at the ACS National Meeting in San Francisco. His talk was entitled, “Molecular clusters as models of quantum dot surfaces” and highlighted work done by graduate student Swamy Pittala.

April 2014

Kevin has been named an Emerging Investigator by the Journal of Materials Chemistry A!

December 2013

Keith’s paper on the speciation of Cr³⁺ during the synthesis of SrTiO₃ has been accepted in the J. Mater. Chem. A!

Publications

EPR Facilities

Post author By kevink
Post date January 2, 2017

The Kittilstved group took over the responsibility for the Department of Chemistry EPR Facility from Prof. Paul Lahti (Emeritus) in May 2015. The facility is comprised of a Bruker E500 CW-EPR spectrometer with both X- and Q-band capabilities. In addition, there are liquid nitrogen and helium flow cryostats for both X- and Q-bands. Photo-EPR experiments are also capable through optical ports in front of most cavities. The X-band option is also supported by numerous optional cavities including double-resonator, dual-mode (parallel and perpendicular modes) and super-Q. Kinetics experiments are also possible and easy to setup through 2-dimensional experiment routines. For more information about becoming a user of the facility, then please email Kevin. Trained and approved users can access the online scheduler at this page.

EPR