Tag Archives: Hilary Jenkins

Self-assembling molecular rings from McMaster University (Canada)

An April 21, 2016 news item on Nanotechnology Now highlights some research from Canada’s McMaster University,

Imagine throwing Lego pieces into the air and seeing them fall to the ground assembled into the shape of a house or plane.

Nature effortlessly does the equivalent all the time, using molecules as building blocks.

The right combination of ingredients and conditions spontaneously assembles structures as complex as viruses or cellular membranes. Chemists marvel at this very efficient approach to creating large molecular structures and keep searching for new ways to emulate the process using their own components.

Now, in a McMaster University laboratory, chemistry researchers have managed to coax molecules known as tellurazole oxides into assembling themselves into cyclic structures – a major advance in their field that creates a new and promising set of materials.

An April 20, 2016 McMaster University news release by Wade Hemsworth, which originated the news item, provides more detail,

“This is a seed we have found – one we have never seen. It has sprouted, now we need to see how tall the tree will grow and what kind of fruit it will bear,” says Ignacio Vargas Baca, an associate professor in McMaster’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. “Once we understand the properties of these new materials, we can look at their potential applications.”

Barca’s group works in the realm of supramolecular chemistry, where the key is to exploit the forces that keep molecules together. Hydrogen atoms, for example, can form strong bridges between water molecules or pairs of DNA strands.

Earlier, the realization that atoms of iodine and bromine can act in a similar way had sparked great excitement in chemistry circles, giving rise to the hot field of “halogen bonding,” where other researchers have had success with enormous assemblies, but have had difficulties controlling the association of just a few molecules.

Meanwhile, Vargas’ group moved over one column on the periodic table of elements to work with chalcogens instead.

They discovered that certain molecules that contain the element tellurium assemble automatically into rings in solution, a success that has no rival in halogen bonding and constitutes a significant advance in supramolecular chemistry.

For now, he and his team envision uses in areas as diverse as communication technologies, gas storage and catalysis.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Supramolecular macrocycles reversibly assembled by Te…O chalcogen bonding by Peter C. Ho, Patrick Szydlowski, Jocelyn Sinclair, Philip J. W. Elder, Joachim Kübel, Chris Gendy, Lucia Myongwon Lee, Hilary Jenkins, James F. Britten, Derek R. Morim, & Ignacio Vargas-Baca.    Nature Communications 7, Article number: 11299  doi:10.1038/ncomms11299 Published 19 April 2016

This is an open access paper.