Molecular robotics for synthesis and catalysis
The aim of this project is to design, synthesize and investigate the operation of synthetic molecular machines capable of performing sophisticated tasks in chemical synthesis. The molecular machines are inspired by biological systems, where substrates are shuttled between different enzymatic sites, undergoing chemical transformations at each step. Control of substrate position allows for reactions to occur in a specific sequence, with the molecular machine dictating the selectivity of each successive chemical reaction. The project both seeks to optimize the structure of the molecular machines for use as a synthetic platform and demonstrate their usefulness for synthesis and catalysis in model reactions. The successful demonstration of this concept would mark the beginning of a fundamentally new approach for the construction of molecules.