Edward E. Waali
Professor
Email: edward.waali@umontana.edu
Phone: (406) 243-4992
Ed Waali came to UM in 1979 after holding faculty positions in Wisconsin and Georgia. He completed his Ph.D. work in 1970 under the direction of Sara Jane Rhoads at the University of Wyoming and carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Florida with Bill Jones. Ed is an organic chemist whose interests lie primarily in experimental and theoretical investigations of reaction mechanisms. He teaches organic chemistry and spectroscopy at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Course Links
Research Interests
Our organic research interests are in the high-energy degradation of polymers useful in microlithography, reaction mechanisms, the synthesis and properties of theoretically important compounds and intermediates, and molecular spectroscopy. Molecular orbital calculations (MO) play an important role in this work.
The products derived from the exposure of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) to x-rays have been studied by one and two-dimensional NMR spectroscopy. Chain-scission and chain-intact products have been observed.
Representative Publications
E. E. Waali, K. M. Hayataka, J. D. Scott, J. M. Klopf, Y. Vladimirsky, and O. Vladimirsky, “400 and 750 MHz One- and Two-Dimensional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectra of X-ray Degraded Poly(Methyl Methacrylate). Comparison with UV Degraded Material,” Proc. SPIE Int. Soc. Opt. Eng., 1998, 3331, 518-524.
E. E. Waali, J. D. Scott, J. M. Klopf, Y. Vladimirsky and O. Vladimirsky, “One- and Two-Dimensional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectra of X-ray Degraded Poly(methyl methacrylate),” Macromolecules, 1997, 30, 2386.
E. E. Waali, J. D. Scott, “The One and Two-Dimensional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectra of X-ray degraded Poly(Methyl Methacrylate),” Polymer Preprints, 1997, 38, 841.
D. A. Hrovat, E. E. Waali, and W. T. Borden, “Ab Initio Calculations of the Singlet-Triplet Energy Difference in Phenylnitrene,” J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1992, 114, 8698.


