Toomas's Home Page -> Research Site map
Research
 
Part of Toomas Tamm's website
(Picture of a molecular orbital)

Classification of My Work

General area: Exact and Natural Sciences
Science:Chemistry
Branch:Theoretical Chemistry
Approach:Quantum Chemistry


Related Pages at this Site


Present

Here at Tallinn Technical University I have started the studies in two areas: (a) accurate description of solvent effects in solutions of transition metal ions, and (b) vibrational energy transfer processes in large molecules, catalysts in particular. Both areas are in their early stages of development and not much can be written at the moment yet.

Helsinki: 1996-1998

At University of Helsinki I was working on the relativistic effects in quantum chemistry, with the application of ab initio methods and pseudopotentials. At least two longer term goals were set: (1) new species prediction, where we were trying to theoretically map the outlying areas of 'islands of stability' of related chemical compounds, and (2) aurophilic attraction, the study of the phenomenon of two closed-shell atoms of gold (as well as several other heavy elements) attracting each other in various chemical contexts. This leads to unusually short Au-Au bonds (shorter than in bulk metallic gold) and effects as strange as ions of the same charge attracting each other.

The research on new species has resulted in five papers (numbers 12, 13, 14, 16, 18 in my list of publications). The aurophilic attraction studies yielded two papers (numbers 15 and 17). The latter one also contains some new-species predictions.

The picture at the top of the page is the 3b3 electronic orbital of the quintet MoN2. Calculations show that this orbital contains only one elctron in this electronic state. This comes from the research that led to publication no. 12.

University of Florida, 1994-1996

During my two and a half years at University of Florida in Gainesville, I was involved in the development of the Self-Consistent Reaction Field and Polarizable Continuum Models for solvation, including but not limited to the Multi-Cavity variety of the same. I also worked on potential energy surfaces of SN2 reactions. Most of the results have been published; check my CV for details.

I was also coordinating the technical side of the development of the ZINDO quantum-chemical software package. Since I had to edit fairly large Z-matrixes by hand once in a while, I wrote a major mode for emacs which should make these things easier. It is available (here).

University of Tartu, until 1993

During my undergraduate and graduate years at the University, I worked on various aspects of theoretical chemistry. In particular, I studied polar resonance and its relation to solvent effects and worked on implementing solvation code in quantum-chemical software. For a brief period of time I also worked on quantitative structure-activity relationships, and measured reaction kinetics, but no publications resulted from that.

If you wish to learn more about my research and background, you may have a look at my Curriculum Vitae.


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Last modified: 09 November 1999
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