Eric Scharrer

Professor, Chemistry

Eric Scharrer’s expertise lies in the fields of organic chemistry, liquid crystals, materials chemistry, and organometallic chemistry. His research interests focus on the synthesis and analysis of new organic liquid crystals, which are an industrial important class of compounds used in displays for watches, cell phones, calculators, and computers. Liquid crystalline molecules have the unusual ability to drastically change the way that light interacts with the molecules when they are reoriented using an electric or magnetic field. Scharrer has researched new liquid crystalline compounds, with funding provided by the National Science Foundation. Scharrer and his students use standard organic synthesis techniques to prepare compounds and spectroscopy to structurally characterize them, and then study the liquid crystalline behavior using a polarizing microscope equipped with a heating stage and differential scanning calorimetry. Scharrer has co-written and published multiple papers for journals such as Journal of Materials ChemistryChemistry of Materials, and Liquid Crystals.

Education
BS Bates College 1988
PhD University of North Carolina Chapel Hill 1993
Classes
Organic Chemistry II CHEM 251-A Spring 2024
Organic Chemistry I CHEM 250-B Fall 2024

Contact Information

Thompson 355G