Office: CAP 3.03 Email: m.cook@uea.ac.uk  Tel/Fax: +44 (0) 1603-593135/592015 School Position: Emeritus Professor of Chemistry 2008- ; Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow 2010-2012: Co-director of the Wolfson Materials and Catalysis Centre; former Head of School (2004-2006); former Head of Chemistry (2002-2004), member of the Wolfson Materials & Catalysis Centre.

Honours: 2010 Linstead Career Award (Society of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines) awarded at ICPP-6 in New Mexico, July 2010.

Higher education

BSc Birmingham,1964; PhD Birmingham,1967.

Professional career

First faculty post, UEA - Senior Demonstrator, 1967. First permanent faculty post, UEA - Lecturer, 1969. Most recent promotion, Professor of Chemistry, 1994.

Mike has published more than 240 articles, principally peer reviewed research papers but also various invited book chapters, reviews, patents and patent applications. About 70% of these are concerned with research into the chemistry and applications of phthalocyanines and related macrocycles, a research area he entered about 25 years ago. He is an established international figure in phthalocyanine research and through CEC contracts and other opportunities his research group has collaborated with other major phthalocyanine groups in Europe. He also has research collaborations with groups in Japan and South Africa. He has co-organised or served on organising committees of five major international conferences on phthalocyanines, viz the Edinburgh Conference in 1998 which was a catalyst for setting up the successful series of biennial International Conferences on Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines, ICPP, held in Dijon 2000, Kyoto 2002, New Orleans 2004 and Rome 2006. He has given either plenary or invited lectures at all of these and has also been a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines since its inception in 1997. In addition he has served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Materials Chemistry. Recent invited international lectures have been given at ICCC-37 in Cape Town (2006), ICPP-5 in Moscow (2008), York University Toronto (2009), 2nd Georgian Bay International Conference on Bioinorganic Chemistry, Ontario (2009), Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2010), Beijing Jiaotong University (2010) and ICPP-6 Santa Ana Pueblo (2010). He has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, and was the 2006 Barker Lecturer at Rhodes University, Grahamstown.

Research areas

Prior to his present research interests in phthalocyanine chemistry, Mike worked with Professor Alan Katritzky 1967 -1974 on tautomerism of heteraromatics, aromaticity of heterocycles, acidity functions, and conformational analysis of saturated nitrogen heterocycles. Mike also developed independent research lines in conformational analysis as well as becoming interested in materials chemistry, ca. 1976, especially in the synthesis of luminescent Ru and Os complexes of bipyridyls and phenanthrolines and their applications in flat plate solar energy collectors.

Research into phthalocyanines commenced 1985 and has focussed on the purpose designed synthesis of novel derivatives. The group was the first to devise a convenient route to so-called non-peripherally substituted octa-alkoxyphthalocyanines near ir absorbers and octa-alkyl phthalocyanines which proved to be a new sub-class of discotic liquid crystals. This self assembling feature has facilitated the formation of highly ordered thin films of the compounds whether deposited by spin coating, the LB method or by self assembly. Applications of these films, particularly in sensor research, have been a long term feature of the work. Another long term interest in exploiting photophysical phenomena has stimulated research into new phthalocyanine derivatives designed for photodynamic therapy, as optical limiters and as optical sensors. Current research continues some of these themes as well as exploring exciting new and, in some instances, unexpected chemistry of the ‘UEA type’ of phthalocyanines.

Selected Publications

Oligomeric cadmium-phthalocyanine complexes: novel supramolecular free radical structures
Chambrier, G. F. White, M. J. Cook, Chem. Eur. J., 2007, 13, 7608-7618.  DOI:  10.1002/chem.200700745

A capping methodology for the synthesis of lower μ-oxo-phthalocyaninato silicon oligomers
A. N. Cammidge, F. Nekelson, M. Helliwell, M. J. Heeney and M. J. Cook
Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2005, 127, 16382-16383.  DOI: 10.1021/ja0558443

An Evanescent-Field-Driven Self-Assembled Molecular Photoswitch for Macrocycle Coordination and Release
Z. Wang, A-M. Nygård, M.J. Cook, D.A. Russell
Langmuir, 2004, 20, 5850 - 585.  DOI: 10.1021/la0498861

Structural characterisation of a red phthalocyanine
P.M. Burnham, M.J. Cook, L.A. Gerrard, M.J. Heeney, D.L. Hughes
Chemical Communications, 2003, 2064-2065.  DOI: 10.1039/b304173p