Project summary
Materials with well-defined pore sizes have been extensively studied during the last decades for their potential usability in many practical applications. The main types of such materials are zeolites1, porous organic frameworks (POF)2, including 3D covalent organic frameworks (COF)3, and metal-organic frameworks (MOF) belonging to porous coordination polymers4. The possible application areas of these materials include storage of gases or other small-size molecules, catalysis, drug delivery, sensing, ion exchange, or separation, including resolution of enantiomers5.
The Ph.D. project aims to prepare symmetric building blocks containing several permanently charged groups (quaternary ammonium or sulfonate groups) suitable for constructing self-assembled aggregates. In such aggregates, the building units will be bound together by multiply positively charged groups (anchors) attached to the ends of the building block core (e.g., tetraphenylmethane). We recently described the synthesis of required multiply charged anchors6 and their usability for chiral separation after electrostatic binding of the chiral selector to the Nafion membrane7.
The current project, besides synthesizing the charged building blocks, will study their properties and their usability for constructing self-assembled solid phases for chromatographic separations, eventually for other uses.
A Ph.D. applicant is expected to be a skillful and independent synthetic chemist capable of performing syntheses of organic compounds under an inert atmosphere, separating the products using chromatography and other separation techniques, and characterizing the prepared compounds by NMR, MS, IR, and UV.
References
(1) Wang, S.; Peng, Y. Natural Zeolites as Effective Adsorbents in Water and Wastewater Treatment. Chem. Eng. J. 2010, 156 (1), 11–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2009.10.029.
(2) Zhang, S.; Yang, Q.; Wang, C.; Luo, X.; Kim, J.; Wang, Z.; Yamauchi, Y. Porous Organic Frameworks: Advanced Materials in Analytical Chemistry. Adv. Sci. 2018, 5 (12), 1801116. https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.201801116.
(3) Das, S.; Heasman, P.; Ben, T.; Qiu, S. Porous Organic Materials: Strategic Design and Structure–Function Correlation. Chem. Rev. 2017, 117 (3), 1515–1563. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemrev.6b00439.
(4) Kitagawa, S.; Kitaura, R.; Noro, S. Functional Porous Coordination Polymers. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2004, 43 (18), 2334–2375. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.200300610.
(5) Navarro-Sánchez, J.; Argente-García, A. I.; Moliner-Martínez, Y.; Roca-Sanjuán, D.; Antypov, D.; Campíns-Falcó, P.; Rosseinsky, M. J.; Martí-Gastaldo, C. Peptide Metal–Organic Frameworks for Enantioselective Separation of Chiral Drugs. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2017, 139 (12), 4294–4297. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.7b00280.
(6) Kasal, P.; Jindřich, J. Compounds for Modification of Negatively Charged Carrier Surface, Method of Their Preparation and Use Thereof. Pat. Appl. PCT/CZ2020/050088, November 26, 2020. https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2021104547&_cid=P11-KVSMQA-93828-1.
(7) Kasal, P.; Michel, M.; Gaálová, J.; Cuřínová, P.; Izák, P.; Jindřich, J. Chiral Nafion Membranes Prepared by Strong Electrostatic Binding of Multiply Positively Charged β-Cyclodextrin Derivatives for Tryptophan Racemic Mixtures’ Separation. Mater. Today Commun. 2021, 102234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mtcomm.2021.102234.
