Chemical Sustainability Research Theme Seminar

Molecular materials and supramolecular systems have great potential in separation and sensing applications, but their synthesis and scale-up is challenging because their formation and self-assembly is strongly influenced by reaction environment. This talk will focus on three approaches to control the formation of 3D molecular species and their assembly into molecular materials: 1) tuning the building blocks; 2) varying the interaction strength between building blocks, and 3) controlling the process by which they are made.

I will illustrate these three approaches with our work on low-symmetry porous organic cages (POCs),¹ supramolecular nanotubes formed via chiral recognition of POCs,² and the use of flow synthesis for cages³ and a macrocyclic molecular hinge,⁴ exploiting the enhanced control and wider process windows of working in flow. How things are made is just as important as what they are made from: by combining these three approaches I will set out our strategy for the tunable formation of molecular materials.

References:

1. V. Abet^† and F. T. Szczypiński^†et al., ACIE, 2020, 59, 38, 16755-16763.
2. A. Slater et al., Nat. Chem., 2017, 9, 17-25.
3. M. E. Briggs^† and A. G. Slater^†et al., Chem. Commun., 2015, 51, 17390-17393
4. C. D. Jones et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021, 143, 19, 7553–7565

^{† denotes joint first authorship.}