CAREER: Shape-Adaptive Molecules: Understanding, Controlling, and Exploiting Molecular Motions

由无机、生物无机和有机金属化学项目颁发的CAREER奖支持了印第安纳大学Dongwhan Lee教授的工作，他研究了一类新的形状适应分子，作为一种一般的结构平台，可以在很长的距离上放大和传递构象变化。本研究利用对称处理的大体积芳烃之间单独弱但集体强的非共价相互作用，提供了一种平衡结构刚性（限制竞争构象的数量）和灵活性（实现大规模结构切换）的创新解决方案。该项目的长期目标是实现可行的机制，将这种机械信号转换为分子级设备中可读的电信号输出。通过消除识别事件和信号事件之间直接电子耦合的要求，本研究挑战并补充了现有的分子传感范式。构建和操作这种有组织的、相互作用的化学系统需要跨越无机化学、有机化学、分析化学和计算化学之间传统学科界限的解决问题的能力。该奖项支持的教育项目“超越分子的化学”（CBM）将使用材料化学作为一种多功能的教学工具来教授本科生。通过讲座、实验和暑期项目的整合，CBM将“重新引入”基本的化学概念，并鼓励学生使用组织原则，而不是简单的事实，来解决化学跨学科领域的问题。多元背景下的主动学习是信任管理的一个关键方面，它将有助于培养全面的问题解决者，他们能够在快速变化的研究环境中表现出色，这些环境需要适应性和可转移的技能。

This CAREER award by the Inorganic, Bioinorganic, and Organometallic Chemistry program supports work by Professor Dongwhan Lee at Indiana University to investigate a new class of shape-adaptive molecules as a general structural platform that can amplify and transmit conformational changes over a long distance. Using individually weak, but collectively strong, non-covalent interactions between symmetrically disposed bulky aromatics, this research offers an innovative solution to balance structural rigidity (to limit the number of competing conformations) and flexibility (to enable large-scale structural switching). The longer-term objective of this project is implementing viable mechanisms to transduce such mechanical signals to readable electrical signal outputs in molecular-level devices. By eliminating the requirement of direct electronic coupling between recognition events and signaling events, this research challenges and complements existing paradigms in molecular sensing. Construction and manipulation of such organized and interactive chemical systems require problem-solving skills crossing traditional disciplinary boundaries between inorganic, organic, analytical, and computational chemistry. The educational program supported by this award, Chemistry Beyond Molecules (CBM), will use materials chemistry as a versatile pedagogic tool for teaching undergraduate students. Through integration of lectures, laboratories, and summer projects that are designed to reinforce each other, CBM will "reintroduce" basic chemical concepts and encourage students to use organizing principles, not simple facts, to solve problems in interdisciplinary areas in chemistry. Active learning in multiple context, a key aspect of CBM, will help produce well-rounded problem solvers who can perform well in rapidly changing research environments that demand adaptive and transferrable skills.