Gregory S. Girolami

In the mid-1990s, Girolami began an investigation of the synthesis of new magnetic solids via a building block approach, publishing in Science in 1995. Girolami also reported metal-substituted analogs of Prussian blue that have magnetic ordering temperatures above 100 °C.

Girolami's early work focused on the synthesis of transition metal compounds with metal-hydrogen and metal-carbon bonds, especially those possessing unusual electronic structures. In 1989, Girolami and Morse showed that [Zr(CH3)6] was of trigonal prismatic molecular geometry as indicated by X-ray crystallography. This rare molecular geometry was attributed to second-order Jahn-Teller distortions in this d metal complex. Girolami's group accurately predicted that other d ML6 species such as [Nb(CH3)6], [Ta(CH3)6], and W(CH3)6 would also prove to have trigonal prismatic geometry. Girolami also discovered the first titanium alkyl/alkene complex in 1993, which models the key intermediate in Ziegler-Natta catalysis. Later model studies of C-H, B-H, and Si-H activation by transition metal complexes led to his current work on approaches to the isolation of stable alkane complexes.

Girolami joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1983. He has served as Head of the Chemistry Department twice, first from 2000 until 2005 and again from 2013 to 2016.

In the mid-1980s Girolami began research on the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of thin films, especially of phases containing transition metals. Girolami studied the chemical design of new CVD precursors. He investigated copper(I) compounds for copper CVD, an approach that is now a key fabrication step for integrated circuits. His mechanistic studies of CVD processes involved transition metals, and these efforts have recently resulted in the development of low-temperature CVD to achieve the deposition of conformal thin films, in work carried out in collaboration with Professor John Abelson of Illinois' Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Most recently, he discovered a new class of highly volatile CVD precursors containing the aminodiboranate ligand.

Gregory S. Girolami (born October 16, 1956) is the William H. and Janet G. Lycan Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the synthesis, properties, and reactivity of new inorganic, organometallic, and solid state species. Girolami has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the American Chemical Society.

He was born in 1956 in Honolulu, Hawaii, and grew up in California, Mexico, and Missouri. He started college at the age of 16, and four years later received B.S. degrees both in chemistry and in physics from the University of Texas at Austin. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1981 from the University of California, Berkeley with Prof. Richard A. Andersen. Girolami's doctoral research centered on the chemistry of quadruply-bonded dinuclear transition metal complexes. Thereafter, he was a NATO postdoctoral fellow with Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, and his work there focused on the synthesis and chemistry of first-row transition metal-alkyl complexes.