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The well-known photoreduction of polyoxometalates by alcohols are exploited to produce the reduced species, which cannot be directly produced electrochemically in nonaqueous solvents. Photochemistry is a reliable means to produce stable reduced transition metal substituted heteropoly tungstates in nonpolar media, where they hold promise as multielectron reduction catalysts.

Periodic ab initio QM calculations are employed in order to study structure and redox properties of Cr, Mn, Fe, and Co trivalent transition metal dopants in A1POs-34. The results show that the local environment of Mn and Co dopants is a distorted tetrahedron due to the Jahn-Teller distortions.

The energetics, as well as the electronic structures of the chelate systems consisting of the transition metal (TM) ions and a peptide nanoring, is discussed. The electrostatic interaction is shown to lead to the trapping of the TM cation by the used cyclic peptide skeleton.

The local crystal structure and electronic configuration of transition metal in x-ray amorphous MnO2 and CrO2 nanocrystals were examined by using X-ray absorption (XAS) spectroscopy at Mn K and Cr K-edges. The Mn K-edge XAS study reveals that tetravalent manganese was stabilized in alpha-MnO2-type local atomic arrangement consisting of the intergrowth of edge- and corner-shaped MnO6 octahedra.

Fluorescence behavior of some structurally simple multicomponent systems has been studied in the presence and in absence of the transition metal salts. Preferential solvation of the fluorophore component of the multicomponent system by the water molecules of the hydrated salts of the metals has been identified as one possible origin of the unusually high fluorescence enhancement (FE) shown by some of the systems.

A mixed -phase electrocatalyst containing Pt metal and hydrous ruthenium oxides (RuO2H (sub y)) is found to be a more desired form of catalyst as compared to the Pt-Ru electro catalyzed oxidation of methanol. The active catalyst is discovered to be able to oxidize methanol fully to carbon dioxide and water.

The fundamental physics behind the scarcity of ferromagnetic ferroelectric coexistence is explored. It is found that, in general, the transition metal d electrons, which are essential for magnetism, reduce the tendency for off-center ferroelectric distortion.