求是理学论坛第15场�Prof.Jacques Penelle

报告题目：Comboloidal Macromolecules: Their Synthesis, Molecular and Supramolecular Properties

报告人：Prof. Jacques Penelle

报告时间：2010年11月18日上午9:30

报告地点：化学楼，教八–218

报告内容简介：Comboloidal objects (from the Greek word komboloi, which can be loosely translated by “collection of knots”) are nanometer-size cylinders of small diameters whose surface is densely decorated by lateral functional groups placed periodically along the cylindrical main axis. The term “densely” in the above definition refers to a very congested congregation of substituents on the cylinder’s surface, characterized by grafting densities close to the dense packing state as defined by De Gennes. Similar grafting densities are typically observed on the surface of high-generation dendrimers. In this regime, unusual properties can be displayed by lateral functional groups, either due to steric crowding or as the result of optimal inter-substituent positioning between next neighbors that favor the synergistic behavior typical of stacked systems (crystals, DNA…). The present lecture will first  discuss the design of comboloidal macromolecules, i.e. how to prepare them in a versatile manner. In a second part, specific functional groups, namely carboxylic acids and crown ether substituents, will be added on the above polymer structure in order to demonstrate the substantial to dramatic influence exerted by the substitution architecture of comboloids on molecular and supramolecular properties, using solubility and alkali ion binding, respectively, as a probe of structureproperty relationships.

报告人简介：Professor Penelle was originally trained as an organic chemist in his native Belgium, and obtained a PhD in that area of chemistry in 1989 (University of Louvain). After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Arizona (USA), he switched his research interest to the design of macromolecular systems. He spent several additional years in the United States as an assistant professor in the Department of Polymer Science & Engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, before being promoted to associate professor in the same department. In 2003, he moved to France after having been offered a senior position with the CNRS in the Paris area. His research work focuses mainly on the design of complex, densely substituted polymer architectures, with the ultimate objective of engineering synthetic macromolecules whose physical and biophysical (supra)molecular properties (e;g., molecular recognition, biological membrane permeabilization, self-assembly, vectorial transport…) are comparable or better than the (supra)molecular systems designed by Nature.