Jakob Möbs participated in the 3rd LabMeeting of the Young Crystallographers at STOE. There, he won one of the Poster Prizes for his excellent presentation of his research about The influence of copper on the optical band gap of heterometallic iodido antimonates and bismuthates.
Jakob studied chemistry and mathematics for teaching from 2013 to 2018 at Philipps-University Marburg and finished his first state examination. Since 2019 he is a PhD student at the Heine Research Group (Junior Group in the Dehnen Research Group) in Marburg an der Lahn focusing on Ternary Group 15 Iodidometalate Anions as Building Blocks for new Materials.
Tell us shortly what your poster is about
Originally we wanted to make the band gaps of our materials (hybrid organic-inorganic iodido bismuthates) narrower and more suitable for photovoltaic applications. This we could somewhat achieve through the introduction of copper(I), but as often as we found suitable new compounds we found one where our approach didn’t seem to work at all. So in the project presented here we set out to first make loads of new compounds using a phosphine ligand to stabilize the inorganic parts and then compare them to each other by experimental and theoretical means [1, 2, 3].
When did your interest in chemical crystallography start?
My interest in chemical crystallography started with my first research internship just before my final exams. I prepared my first unknown compound at that time and was fascinated (and still am) to see how you only need a tiny crystal to gain so incredibly much information about a compound, which was a complete mystery before, that you ca draw a picture of it on an atomic level.
What is most fun part of your research?
To press the “solve” button after a single crystal measurement and get the first exciting look at a new structure.
Literature
[1] J. Möbs, M. Gerhard, J.: (HPy)2(Py)CuBi3I12, a low bandgap metal halide photoconductor, Dalton Trans. 2020, 49, 14397–14400. DOI:10.1039/D0DT03427D
[2] J. Möbs, J. Heine: 11/15/17 Complexes as Molecular Models for Metal Halide Double Perovskite Materials, Inorg. Chem. 2019, 58, 6175-6183. DOI:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.9b00429
[3] J. Möbs, J.-N. Luy, A. Shlyaykher, R. Tonner, J. Heine, The influence of copper on the optical band gap of heterometallic iodido antimonates and bismuthates, Dalton Trans. 2021, 50, 15855–15869 .DOI: 10.1039/D1DT02828F