Primary school children do not typically handle droplets of the toxic element mercury with bare hands. However, for a young Vivian Yam, an early experience with a broken thermometer sparked a career synthesizing metal complexes for use in lightharvesting and light-emitting materials. Yam, a recently elected foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences and a chemistry professor at the University of Hong Kong, says, "I was amazed by mercury’s ability to flow and coalesce-unlike most metals we’re exposed to." Over the past three decades, through a combination of molecular design and physical inorganic chemistry, Yam has helped create new classes of metal-containing chromophores and luminophores-molecules that absorb or radiate light and some of which may help mitigate the growing global demand for energy. Yam’s Inaugural Article (1) explores how a platinum(II)-containing compound assembles and forms varied 3D structures with individual spectroscopic properties.
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