Chemistry Staff Seminar Series Seminar

Guy Denuault: Oxygen evolution at nanostructured iron oxide films.   

This presentation will describe our efforts towards the fabrication and characterisation of nanostructured films.  The development of a supported array of vertically aligned metal core-semiconducting shell nanowires designed to catalyse the photoelectrochemcial generation of oxygen will be taken as an example to illustrate our approach.  Results will be presented of the samples, their structural and physical characterisation and for a range of electrochemical experiments chosen to assess the performance of the arrays, including in-situ probing of the generation of oxygen by scanning electrochemical microscopy.

Bruno Linclau: Modification of molecular properties through fluorination

The introduction of fluorine atoms in a given substrate results in a modification of a whole range of molecular, physical, and biological properties. Currently, this is perhaps most appreciated in the life sciences, and in certain segments of materials science eg liquid crystals. Research towards the understanding of the impacts of fluorination – which in many cases can be substantial – is still a very active field, with important discoveries still being made.

Many projects in my group are involved in such research. For example, we are investigating how fluorination influences hydrogen bonding properties of adjacent functional groups, and trying to rationalize the very surprising results that this already has delivered. We are also investigating whether introducing a novel type of fluorine introduction (perfluoroalkylidene fragments) in sugars will, in principle, lead to increased binding to protein thanks to the “polar hydrophobicity” concept. We are also involved in the synthesis of fluorinated analogues of bioactive compounds.

The presentation will summarise some of the recent developments in the understanding of the various impacts of fluorination, including our own contributions, which I believe will be of interest to many groups within the school.