Surface-confined templated synthesis of covalent architectures frim supramolecular blueprints.

Organic polymers offer widespread applications in many fields of science and technology and play a major role in our everyday life since they are incorporated in modern consumer products. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) represent new class of organic polymers with highly ordered two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) covalent structure. Despite their huge potential, the synthesis of COFs is still significantly hindered by longstanding practical and conceptual challenges associated with intrinsic insoluble nature of COFs, and formation of large number of defects when classical organic synthesis methodologies are applied directly for covalent transformation of monomers. To address this issue we propose instead to perform covalent transformation of pre-formed self-assembled molecular networks (SAMNs) designed to have stoichiometry, functionality and connectivity of the final COFs. In a way SAMNs serve as blueprints of the desired covalent casts (COFs). In this project we will focus on 2D COFs formed via surface-confined self-assembly of monomers on atomically flat and conductive surfaces such as highly oriented pyrolytic graphite and gold. This set-up will allow in situ visualization (using appropriate scanning probe microscopy) of the selfassembled and reacted monolayers, reaching sub nm resolution. Various properties of these COFs will be explored.

Keywords:Covalent organic frameworks, Nanotechnology, Supramolecular chemistry, Chemical reactivity, Self-assembly

Disciplines:Other engineering and technology