Speaker: Professor George John, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The City College of New York
Title: Functional Materials – Biomass as a Platform for Molecular Design
Date, Time and Place: Friday, March 1, at 10 am in TB 202
Developing functional materials from renewable resources would be fascinating yet demanding practice, which will have a direct impact on industrial applications, and economically viable choices. This talk discusses an emerging model of generating new chemicals, intermediates and soft materials in a ‘biorefinery’. Our continued efforts in this area have led us to develop new molecular materials through non-covalent synthesis of amphiphilic molecules derived from industrial by-products and co-products. The family of new materials generated include surfactants, emulsions, molecular gels, solid bilayers, scintillating gels, battery components and liquid crystals. More recently, harnessing the availability of ‘chiral pool’ of carbohydrates and selectivity of enzymes catalysis, our laboratory produced an array of amphiphilic molecules from simple sugars and sugar alcohols. Intriguingly, following the principles of green and supramolecular chemistry, we have developed building blocks-to-assembled materials viz environmentally benign antibacterial paints, oil spill recovery materials, energy storage devices, vegetable oil structuring agents and cancer detecting gels. These results will lead to efficient molecular design of supramolecular architectures and next generation multifunctional materials from underutilized plant/crop-based renewable feedstock.
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7695-7698; [7] Langmuir 2010, 26, 17843–17851; [8] Chem. Soc. Rev., 2013, 42 (2), 427-438; [9]
Accounts of Chemical Research, 2016 49,1671-80: [10] Nature Materials 2008, 7, 236-241.