Jean
Fréchet, Scientific Director
Frantisek Svec, Facility Director
The internal research projects of this facility relate
to two of the major themes of the Molecular Foundry—Interfacing
Organic and Inorganic Materials and the Construction
of Supramolecular Materials using nanoscale building
blocks and systems. Efforts have been directed
towards nanomaterials for microelectronics, affording both
low band gap polymers and molecules for advanced patterning.
Current users profit significantly from facility research
in these areas. Facility staff has initiated the development
of nanoporous and microporous materials with controlled chemistry,
porosity and pore size, as well as their application to the
storage of hydrogen, the separation of macromolecules, ionization,
and detection. Simultaneously, nanoreactors containing immobilized
enzymes mimicking metabolic paths as well as enabling processing
of biological macromolecules are also being developed. The
study of nanoporous polymers has expanded to include both
organic and inorganic materials. It now also entails
the modeling of these systems, synthesis of self-assembled
macrocycles with metal ions built into the nanostructures,
and their testing. The development of methods
enabling the preparation of supramolecular assemblies such
as molecular switches, threaded macrocycles and “exploding
dendrons” is well underway. |
Selected Internal
and User research topics
- Nanoporous polymers for hydrogen storage
- Precursors for low bandgap polymers
- Molecules for advanced patterning
- Template-directed
syntheses of novel molecular switches
- Practical syntheses of new synthetic hosts using click chemistry
- Self-assembly of amphiphilic electronic materials
- Exploding dendrons
- Nanostructured porous polymer monoliths
- Effect of molecular orientation on electron mobility in monolayer
films
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