About the project
How can chemistry be used not only to detect dangerous substances, but also to destroy them? This PhD project will develop new metal-based molecular systems capable of recognising and breaking down chemical warfare agents into harmless products. You will combine synthetic inorganic and coordination chemistry with flow chemistry, taking ideas from fundamental molecular design towards practical technologies that could operate outside the laboratory in real-world devices.
Despite their prohibition under international conventions, chemical warfare agents remain a persistent security threat. Developing technologies capable of both detecting these hazardous compounds and rapidly converting them into benign products is therefore an important challenge for modern defence and security.
This PhD project will harness supramolecular and inorganic coordination chemistry to create multifunctional coordination cages for chemical detection and remediation. Coordination cages are discrete polymetallic architectures with highly tuneable internal cavities and rich host–guest chemistry, offering an exciting platform for combining molecular recognition, sensing and catalysis within a single system.
You will work at the interface of synthetic inorganic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, photoluminescence spectroscopy and flow chemistry, developing new platforms that can recognise hazardous chemical species, generate an optical response to signal their presence, and facilitate their conversion into less harmful products.
The longer-term ambition is to translate these fundamental molecular processes into integrated, field-deployable technologies capable of both detection and remediation.
