NSE/NIRT: Single Molecule Functional Nanostructures

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This award is in response to the Nanoscience and Engineering (NSE) solicitation(NSF-00-119) and involves a nanoscience Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT) at the University of Pennsylvania with broad-ranging national and international collaborations. It is being co-supported by the Polymers Program of the Division of Materials Research (DMR), the Special Programs of the Division of Chemistry (CHE), and the Interfacial, Transport and Thermodynamic Processes Program of the Division of Chemical & Transport Systems (CTS).%%%The ability to transition nanoscience and engineering (NSE) research to nanotechnology will depend on the development of efficient new synthetic methods to produce monodisperse nanoscale objects. To this end, the primary goal of this Nanoscale Interdisciplinary research team (NIRT) is to enable a rational approach to the design and synthesis of libraries of complex functional monodisperse objects of well-defined shapes, dimensions up to the wavelength of light, surface, and internal compartmentalized architecture. To accomplish this goal, the NIRT combines synthetic methodologies from Materials and the Life Sciences. The NIRT has assembled expertise in organic, macromolecular, supramolecular, and peptide synthesis, along with theory and modeling, and structural analysis by x-rays, TEM, and SFM. The team effort is amplified by exploiting established links with partners in industry and in Europe. Success will reveal the principles required for the construction of libraries of monodisperse self-assembling dendritic building blocks, to enable the hierarchical design of monodisperse single molecule functional nanostructures (SMN) with shape, chirality, internal and external structure, and function controlled at the level of precision currently available only in biological systems. The NIRT will investigate the structure and properties of these nanoscale objects at the level of the single molecule and in 2-D and 3-D assemblies. Novel applications of SMNs are elaborated that have potential to yield nanoscale devices for electronic, optical, chemical and medical technologies.