Supramolekulare Chemie

 

Research interests and projects

  • Supramolecular synthesis and self-assembly
  • Molecular recognition
  • Molecular switches and devices
  • Fluorescent chemosensors 

 

Control of self-assembly

One of the biggest challenges in supramolecular chemistry is the control of self-assembly in order to obtain desired structures with desired properties. Nature can easily perform this with the help of templates, it builds functional molecules in response to external stimuli or environmental factors. The project aims at mimicking this adaptive behavior of biological systems, namely transfer molecular information stored in the interacting species to the functions of self-assembled architectures (receptors, sensors or catalysts). Through the exploration of a) "strong" metal-coordination bonds for connection of building blocks with diverse functional groups (binding sites), b) preorganization of these binding sites, c) methods to control the assembly between ligands and metal ions with a help of target-templates, the project focuses on creation of compound libraries with adaptive self-assembly.

Chloride-controlled macrocyclization: Supramolecular Chemistry 2008, 20, 619   Chem-Eur J 2008, 14, 9065

Amine-controlled coordination assembly: Dalton Transaction 2011, 40, 2778

2. Molecular recognition and artificial signal transduction

The well-known and established classes of chemical events have opened new scenarios on the potentiality of chemistry for signal-processing at molecular level. In this project we are looking at the molecular transformations in an unconventional way, we are combining molecular recognition events in one assembly to achieve such properties as reading, writing, memory, switching, logic operations and etc. Any kind of molecular device requires an input signal, for example, light, redox process or chemical reaction. The accumulated energy will be either resulted in the same output or in the transformation to other kind of signal.

    

Receptor for recognition of perrhenate anion: Org Biomol Chem 2011, 9, 7358

 

3. Design of fluorescent sensors for analyte detection in water

It is still a challenge to rationally design cheap and selective sensors for certain analytes functioning in a competitive aqueous medium. Though the problem is partially solved using substrate-selective proteins which are modified with fluorescent labels, less expensive sensors with novel selectivities are required. In this project we develop a new approach for the design of fluorescence sensors for a series of substrates (phosphates, carboxylates, amino acids and amines) that are operating in aqueous solution. Our approach is based on the screening of dynamic combinatorial libraries consisting of metal cations and newly designed ligands bearing fluorophores, and a consecutive evaluation of the components that are responsible for a selective detection of a particular guest.

Fluorescence detection of ATP Inorg. Chem. 2012, 51,7948