Supramolecular Hosts: From Energy Intensive Separations to Sensors and Soft Robotics

MATERIALS RIG SEMINAR

Speaker: Prof. Niveen M. Khashab, King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia

Host-guest based mechanisms have been heavily exploited for molecular recognition and eventual separation/ entrapment of a guest molecule. Choosing the right host has in most of the cases depended on complimentary size and charge thus, focusing mainly on the intrinsic interactions of the guest in the cavity of a macrocycle or a cage. Interestingly, expanding host-guest interactions to the extrinsic environment of the host afforded an intriguing set of molecular descriptors that ultimately led to unexplored host-guest interactions. In this talk, a set of supramolecular hosts ranging from 2D macrocycles to 3D cages are presented with intriguing intrinsic and extrinsic host-guest interactions that enabled them to be used for hydrocarbon and isomers separation from crude oil as well as smart recognition units in polymer composites for sensors and soft robotics. Understanding the full range of supramolecular interactions will ultimately promote a better integration of molecular building blocks to design and fabricate the “next -generation” sustainable and smart materials. 

Bio: 

Niveen M. Khashab is a Professor of Chemistry at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). After her doctoral studies at the University of Florida, she joined sir Fraser Stoddart’s Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, and then at Northwestern University working on supramolecular chemistry. Her current efforts focus on intrinsically porous materials (IPMs) for energy intensive separations and supramolecular assembled capsules (SACs) for encapsulation, delivery and biomedical applications. She is the recipient of the Crow Award in Organic Chemistry in 2004, AlMaraai Award for Nanotechnology in 2013 and the L’Oréal-Unesco Women in Science International Award in 2017. In 2021, she was named a fellow of the Royal Chemical Society. She is on the editorial board of 10 scientific journal (ACS, RSC, Wiley) and currently serving as an associate editor at Chemistry of Materials (ACS).