​​​Thi Thanh Ngan Nguyen​

Sensing, capturing and separating enantiomers is important for environmental safety, agricultural chemistry, and drug design. The use of hemicucurbiturils is an effective strategy because of the combination of various monomers in a single-step templated mechanochemical synthesis. Due to the absence of bulk solvent the self-organizing efficiency is amplified and there is less waste - the process is green and sustainable. The current work will study the fundamentals of self-organization of hemicucurbiturils, the binding (capturing) of chiral molecules, and detecting chirality using supramolecular complexes. In the long term, the empirical observations will be combined with results from computational chemistry and cheminformatics to build models for predicting necessary monomers and reaction conditions to form macrocycles with desired properties. The outcomes of the project are expected to be highly useful for organizations and industries that monitor, use, or manufacture chiral compounds