Synthesis & Characterisation Photoresponsive Metal Organic Frameworks & Implementation of Cavity Perturbation Theory in study of Liquid Chromatography
Lead Research Organisation:
Cardiff University
Department Name: Chemistry
Abstract
The project will investigate the use of photoactive crystalline porous materials such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) as a platform for nanofluidic devices. Such materials offer the potential to act as hosts for controlled guest diffusion, in which laser-induced structural changes can direct the flow of guest species. Being able to study and control the movement of molecules on this scale offers exciting possibilities in the miniaturising of microfluidic devices used for medical diagnostics, sensing, and materials sorting applications, with one ultimate goal being single-molecule sorting. This is a new approach that builds on and diverges from the global MOF community into the realm of nanofluidics, offering rich opportunities for a strongly motivated graduate student.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Timothy Easun (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Luke Kidwell (Student) |
Studentship Projects
| Project Reference | Relationship | Related To | Start | End | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EP/N509449/1 | 01/10/2016 | 30/09/2021 | |||
| 1796496 | Studentship | EP/N509449/1 | 01/10/2016 | 31/05/2020 | Luke Kidwell |
| Description | My PhD is in two parts: i) to design a metal organic framework incorporating a ligand that contains the spiro- center, typical of the photoactive molecules spiropyran/spiro-oxazine. ii) to design a flow system that can monitor the transport of an analyte through a framework. i) I have created two new metal organic frameworks, incorporating our target photoactive ligand. These are the first examples where spiropyran has been incorporated as an intrinsic part of the structure, as opposed to previous work where they have been incorporated as a pendant group or a guest molecule. Unfortunately I cannot achieve phase purity and this is currently preventing any kind of meaningful analysis being performed on the material. The only data that I have obtained is from Single Crystal X Ray Diffraction. ii) The flow system has been designed and the separation of xylene isomers by the UiO-66 framework has been tested. Our results have so far correlated with the literature, with the ortho-xyelene isomer being retained longer than the meta- and para-xylene isomers. The next step is to refine the method so that more in-depth analysis can be performed, such as determining some mechanistic information about how the xyelene isomers travel through the framework. The end goal is to test the new frameworks with the flow system therefore providing an in depth analysis of the new framework. |
| Exploitation Route | The framework has been synthesized, the next step would be purification and then determining what separation it could perform well at, such as heavy metal extraction from polluted water. The flow system has been designed, the next step is to find a suitable method of interpreting the data to which the next step would be using it to characterize many different separations. |
| Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Chemicals,Energy,Environment,Other |