Inclusion Chemistry of Flexible Hosts

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This project in the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry Program is in the area of host-guest chemistry. The project is directed toward an understanding of the interaction of flexible hosts with a variety of guest molecules. For the hosts, focus will be on liquid clathrates and calixarenes. Fundamental understanding of the ability of guests to organize hosts will be investigated. A comparison of the polarity of the cavity and that of the solvent will be sought for a range of systems. Heavy reliance on single crystal X-ray diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and molecular modelling will be necessary to characterize the structures and interactions. The development of flexible hosts as models for clay minerals and for bioinorganic molecules is planned. For the latter, calixarenes will be functionalized using standard synthetic organic procedures. Aminocalixarenes will be synthesized and their complexation of transition metal ions will be investigated. Information derived from studies of flexible hosts will be applied to problems of separation science. This study is expected to provide important fundamental information about interactions between species in solutions and about the kinds of interactions which are involved in the recognition of substrates by enzymes. The study may also lead to new methodology for the separation of mixtures of chemicals.