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Research Summary
We are interested in synthesizing new materials with novel properties, in discovering chemical reactions and how they work, and in finding new procedures for synthesis.
The research on new materials is currently focused on optically active helical conjugated molecules. By using procedures related to the one illustrated above, we can make such molecules in large amounts and with useful functionality. This has allowed us to discover, design, and synthesize examples that spontaneously arrange themselves into large corkscrew-shaped columns, symbolized below as a molecular "slinky," the optical properties of which are extraordinary. We are analyzing these properties and designing procedures for preparing examples that may be even more unusual. Other helical conjugated molecules are being formed into giant helices by appropriate polymerizations, and their properties are being analyzed.
Related research is directed at studying how the great difference between the structures of helices of different handedness can be used to prepare molecules that act as chiral catalysts, inducing achiral molecules to give nonracemic products and to act as chiral derivatizing agents.
The research has recently produced not only unusual materials, but also new chemical transformations and procedures. Among these are a procedure that significantly enhances the usefulness of photochemical cyclizations, one that selectively interchanges the side chains of aryl ethers, and one that facilitates separations of mirror image forms.
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