Designing metal-organic materials through a hierarchical self-assembly strategy. This project will design new discrete and infinite (framework) materials capable of selectively binding and sequestering smaller species. These materials will be useful in the separation of complicated mixtures of chemicals or absorb and store greenhouse gases for environmental benefits or hydrogen for use as fuel.
Metallo-Supramolecular Materials for Chiral Discrimination and Enantiomeric Separation. Separating mixtures of molecules is one of the most enduring challenges in the chemical sciences and accounts for a significant cost burden in many industrial applications. This project aims to design and prepare new chiral self-assembled materials that contain cavities of predictable sizes and shapes. These materials, including molecular capsules, cages and network solids, will act to selectivity bind differ ....Metallo-Supramolecular Materials for Chiral Discrimination and Enantiomeric Separation. Separating mixtures of molecules is one of the most enduring challenges in the chemical sciences and accounts for a significant cost burden in many industrial applications. This project aims to design and prepare new chiral self-assembled materials that contain cavities of predictable sizes and shapes. These materials, including molecular capsules, cages and network solids, will act to selectivity bind different chemical substrates within their chiral encapsulated spaces, thus enabling the straight-forward separation of racemic mixtures of molecules. Small molecules with enantiomeric purity are a fundamental requirement as starting materials for drug development and a wide range of pharmaceutical applications.Read moreRead less
Targeted synthesis of porous materials towards gas sorption and separation. Targeted synthesis, using a building block strategy and computational design, is an efficient method for controlled synthesis of porous materials. This project uses this method to synthesise porous materials with permanent functional pores for separating and storing fuels and greenhouse gases, addressing demanding energy and environmental problems.
Flexible crystals: inducing new physical properties in crystalline materials through the combination and control of intermolecular interactions. The proposal aims to design new crystalline materials with unique physical and mechanical properties such as elastic flexibility. An innovative approach will be employed, using the weak forces between molecules arranged in a crystal lattice to control the bulk properties of the materials. The strength, nature and vectors of the intermolecular interactio ....Flexible crystals: inducing new physical properties in crystalline materials through the combination and control of intermolecular interactions. The proposal aims to design new crystalline materials with unique physical and mechanical properties such as elastic flexibility. An innovative approach will be employed, using the weak forces between molecules arranged in a crystal lattice to control the bulk properties of the materials. The strength, nature and vectors of the intermolecular interactions will be varied and correlated with the resulting mechanical characteristics. By doing so, this project will learn how to engineer materials with predictable and useful properties. The development of this approach will generate fundamental understanding of complementary intermolecular forces and lay the foundations for the materials produced to be tailored for specific high-tech applications.Read moreRead less