Leonard Prins, from the University of Padova, will deliver a seminar entitled, "Self-assembly of Functional Nanosystems under Dissipative Conditions." Hosted by Paramjit Arora.
For the speaker's research page click here.
For the complete abstract, with illustration, click here.
Abstract: Living organisms need energy to stay alive. Translated into terms of chemistry, this implies that life is a kinetically, rather than thermodynamically, stable state. Over the past decades, chemists have mastered the art of assembling small molecules into complex nanostructures using non-covalent interactions. The driving force for self-assembly is thermodynamics: the self-assembled structure is more stable than the separate components (Figure 1a). Such self-assembled structures are now used as functional catalysts, sensors, and materials. However, they differ in a fundamentally different way from natural systems, which are NOT at thermodynamic equilibrium. The challenge is now to develop chemical systems in the laboratory that require energy consumption to maintain their state (Figure 1b). On one hand, such systems may lead to a better understanding of self-assembly in Nature, but may also may lead to innovative catalysts and sensors. Here, we discuss the self-assembly of complex chemical systems under thermodynamic control and out-of-equilibrium and applications in molecular sensing and catalysis [1-3].
