Supramolecular and polymeric gel materials enabled by, and enabling, chemical transformations

This is a PhD research project in Chemistry. The Vilela and Lloyd groups are combining their expertise to produce materials that mimic biological out-of-equilibrium materials. Biological tissue requires fuels to maintain many of their properties meaning that without the fuel the material properties will dissipate. The artificial materials to be developed in this project will utilise the combination of water, supramolecular gelators, oxygen and light energy to control the assembly and disassembly of gel materials. This creates materials that undergo fuelled self-assembly through autocatalytic processes and disassemble through dissipation, fulfilling many of the known properties of biological materials. The materials will be applied to applications in drug delivery, cell culture and chemical transformations (as the photo-active groups incorporated into the materials can act as photocatalysts for pharmaceutical drug syntheses).