The Piers Group was established in 1990 and has been conducting mechanistic organometallic chemistry aimed at a variety of applications, from olefin polymerization and metathesis catalysis, to activation and conversion of small molecules for alternative energy schemes.

Research Tools

The Piers Group occupies a state-of-the-art suite of laboratories on the 5th floor of the award winning EEEL Building. In addition to a synthetic lab for 16 researchers, the group has a shared instrumentation room with the Welch group. A faculty and student office suite is located adjacent to the laboratories, overlooking the atrium of the building.

The Piers Group has 7 inert atmosphere glove boxes, including one dedicated to electrochemical measurements, two electrocatalytic work stations and a fully calibrated GC for product analysis, a separate GC/MS, a UV-vis/fluorescence spectrometer, and a ReactIR instrument. We also have photochemical and microwave reactors. As of September 2014, we also have a brand new Bruker 500 MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometer to meet all of the group's NMR needs.

In addition to the group's equipment, the Department of Chemistry has a full suite of NMR spectrometers, an EPR spectrometer, advanced Mass Spec facilities, X-ray diffractometers, a state-of-the-art glassblowing facility, in-house microanalytical services and expert staff to provide technical advice and help with experiment design.