Chemistry Seminar with Dr. Marcus Weck from NYU at 4:00pm

Bottom-up strategies to fabricate functional materials rely extensively on noncovalent chemistry. The presentation will describe two strategies towards functional materials on two different length scales, the nano- and the microscale, using noncovalent chemistry. In the first part, a polymer approach towards well-defined structures reminiscent of Nature — in a sequence specific and monodisperse manner — will be describes. In particular, the presentation will focus on a folding approach towards artificial proteins based on the controlled polymerization methods of structurally simple, yet complex monomers to engineer homo- or heterotelechelic secondary structure-containing poly(N-(1-(naphthalene-2-yl)ethyl) methacrylamide), poly(thiophene), and poly(aryl isocyanide) helices, poly(styrene) and poly(norbornene) random coils, and poly(p-phenylene vinylene) parallel and antiparallel sheets. Our strategy takes these building blocks and, through high fidelity orthogonal molecular recognition processes such as hydrogen bonding, metal coordination, and pi-pi stacking, engineer three-dimensional architectures. The second part will focus on the self-assembly and crystallization of colloidal particles into well-defined architectures. We are translating molecular properties such as covalency, chirality, and bond directionality into the colloidal world to fabricated desired 3D architectures such as Kagome lattices, cage structures, and colloidal machines.