CHEM Seminar - Investigating Structure and Mechanism in Supramolecular Chemistry

Speaker: Professor Xiaoyu CAO

Institution: Department of Chemistry, Xiamen University

Hosted by: Professor Hongkai WU

Abstract

Molecular assembly not only provides an elegant approach to create sophisticated supramolecular structures and functional materials beyond molecules, but also provides model systems for studding complex biological assemblies. Realizing controllable molecular assemblies require comprehensive understanding towards physical chemical mechanisms of the assembly process. In molecular assemblies, the building blocks are connected through weak interactions to form complex structures with mixed isomers, their mechanistic study is challenging due to lack of proper characterization methods. In this talk, I will introduce our recent progresses in mechanistic study of two molecular assembly systems. We constructed a series of face-rotating polyhedra and investigated the construction and inter-conversion process of enantiomers through a combination of chiral HPLC, CD, MS and NMR. Furthermore, we introduced microfluidic NMR technique for in situ characterization of the kinetic process of dethreading of CB[8] from rotaxane in high-resolution.

About the speaker

Xiaoyu Cao is currently a professor at the Department of Chemistry of Xiamen University. He received his B.S. (2003) from Peking University (China) and Ph.D. (2009) from Université Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg, France) supervised by Nobel laureate Professor Jean-Marie Lehn. From 2009 to 2011, he was awarded a Marie-Curie IntraEuropean Fellowship to work with Prof. E. W. (Bert) Meijer at Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands). He started his independent career as an associate professor in 2011 and became a professor in 2017 at Xiamen University. His research interests focus on molecular assembly, catassembly, supramolecular chemistry and organic electronics.