theme-23-01

Engineering Metal-Organic Networks as Enantioselective Sensing Materials

Supervisors

Paulo Nuno Martinho, pnmartinho@ciencias.ulisboa.pt

Alexander Kirillov, kirillov@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

Registration Institution

Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa

Project description

This research proposal aims to develop new enantioselective chiral Hofmann clathrates that can be applied in the fabrication of sensors for detecting target compounds, with possible uses in the fields of pharmaceuticals, biology, and chemistry. Hofmann porous coordination polymers are also known for their magnetic properties, including spin lability. These properties can be explored to sense a variety of guest molecules inside the pores of coordination polymers. The present project comprises several synthetic strategies to insert chirality and produce new Hofmann structures. These materials will then be used to evaluate the resolution of racemic mixtures of pharmaceutically relevant products by chiral differentiation by the host. For comparative purposes and to understand the features and limitations of the obtained materials, achiral clathrates will also be investigated. Since there are limited examples of chiral Hofmann clathrates and their enantioselectivity is not reported, this project can advance the state-of-the-art on the use of Hofmann clathrates as sensors of bioactive molecules.

The research will be developed in the Inorganic Molecules and Materials (IM2) Lab at Centro de Química Estrutural (CQE) and the Institute of Molecular Sciences (CQE-IST) under the supervision of Dr. Paulo Martinho and Dr. Alexander Kirillov. Dr. Martinho’s research is dedicated to the synthesis of paramagnetic coordination compounds and the study of their magnetic properties. Dr. Kirillov’s research is devoted to the design and synthesis of functional coordination polymers. A 6 month secondment in the laboratory of Prof. Adrià Gil-Mestres (Universitat de Lleida, Spain) to apply computational chemistry tools is also envisaged.

Keywords

Coordination Chemistry

Materials Science

Spin Crossover

Pharmaceuticals

Enantioselectivity