Our Research
Overview
Our research is driven by the joy of designing, synthesizing and finally constructing functional supramolecules and materials beyond the single molecule.
The research in our laboratories starts with the organic synthesis of necessary building blocks, ligands and host systems. It is followed by analysis of material properties, application in catalysis or in general, the analysis of possible application of the functional supramolecular system. Currently, we are very much interested in supramolecular systems, that react to changes in the surrounding environment and thus enable us to control their functionality.
Fluorinated Organic Cage Compounds
To construct functional supermolecules, we combine modern fluoroorganic chemistry with supramolecular chemistry. This allowed us to construct the first highly fluorinated porous organic cage.
We study synthesize the building blocks and study the formation and properties of our new cage-like compounds.
These results were just published in ChemComm and featured on the cover as well, see publications.
Photochemistry
To be able to gain control over a function or over the formation and disassembly of a supramolecular structure, we are incorporating photoswitchable molecules into them.
We synthesize the photoswitches and assemblies and study their photochemistry with our own spectrophotometer. Currently, we are especially interested in photoswitchable systems in combination with halogen bonding.
X-Ray Analysis
We rely heavily on single-crystal X-ray analysis in our group to visualize obtained structures and to obtain additional information about obtained compounds in the solid state.