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SUMMARY:Self-Assembled Soft Materials and the In Situ Synthesis of Nanopar
 ticles - Dr George John\, The City College of New York\, CUNY
DTSTART:20090605T130000Z
DTEND:20090605T140000Z
UID:TALK18646@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Catherine Jordan
DESCRIPTION:The self-assembly of low molecular weight building blocks into
  nanoscale molecular objects has recently attracted considerable interest 
 in terms of the bottom-up fabrication of soft nanomaterials. The building 
 blocks currently used in supramolecular chemistry are synthesized mainly f
 rom petroleum-based starting materials. However\, biobased organic synthes
 is presents distinct advantages for the generation of new building blocks 
 since they are obtainable from renewable resources. Our research efforts a
 re deeply devoted towards developing building blocks from renewable resour
 ces to generate soft materials such as new surfactants\, liquid crystals\,
  lipid nanotubes and molecular gels. Present talk illustrates few successf
 ul examples of generating self-assembled soft materials from agri-sources\
 , through simple organic transformations and by enzyme catalysis. To take 
 these materials to the next level\, we successfully showed the utility of 
 these hydrogels as drug delivery vehicles. Enzyme catalysis was used as a 
 tool to make and break the hydrogels\, which apparently triggered controll
 ed drug delivery. Intriguingly\, by combining biocatalysis\, with principl
 es of green and supramolecular chemistry\, we developed building blocks-to
 -assembled materials. Also address the advances that have led to the under
 standing of chiral behaviour and the subsequent ability to control the str
 ucture of glycolipid nanostructures-derived from renewable resources-and t
 he resulting impact of this on future material applications. The second pa
 rt of the talk addresses the templated synthesis of nanoparticles using se
 lf-assembled soft materials.
LOCATION:Unilever Lecture Theatre\, Department of Chemistry
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