Lecture: 'Air-sensitive photoredox catalysis performed under aerobic conditions in gel networks'
Prof. David Díaz Díaz (Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy, University of Regensburg, Germany)
CiQUS Seminar Room
12:15h
Nature uses confined and compartmentalized environments such as organelles to carry out chemical reactions under mild conditions with a precise control on kinetics and selectivity. Over the last few decades, this has served as an inspiration to develop artificial nanoreactors based on directed self-assembly of small molecules through non-covalent interactions. Within this context, photochemistry can benefit from confined spaces, for example when performed in mesoporous inorganic materials, microemulsions, micelles, vesicles, polyelectrolyte multilayered capsules, liquid foams, and gels. The confinement may improve photochemical processes by influencing key aspects, such as light absorption and the lifetime of redox intermediates. In this talk, our recent advances on the use of supramolecular self-assembled gels as confined microenvironments for performing air -sensitive photochemical processes under aerobic conditions will be discussed. In some reactions the synergistic integration of donor-acceptor pairs in the gel nanofibers is reminiscent of the biological photon-harvesting apparatuses in which excitation light energy is effectively harvested and converted in the array of photosynthetic pigments embedded in biomembranes.
About
David Díaz Díaz received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of La Laguna (Spain) under the supervision of Prof. Víctor Martín. In 2002, he joined Prof. Finn's group as postdoc at The Scripps Research Institute (USA). Since 2006, he has held various positions in academia and industry: 'Ramón y Cajal' Researchers at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) in 2006, Sr. Chemist at Dow Chemical Company (Switzerland) in 2007, Tenured Scientist at CSIC (Spain) in 2009 and Alexander von Humboldt Experienced Researcher at the University of Regensburg (Germany) in 2010. In 2013, he was awarded with the DFG Heisenberg Professorship, being the first Spanish scientist holding this distinction, and he was appointed as Associate Professor at the University of Regensburg. He has received the Young Investigator Award from the Polymer Network Group (Japan) and is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Gels. In 2017, he received an Honorary Adjunct Professorship from Jiangsu University (China) and the accreditation as Associate Professor by the ANECA agency from the Spanish Ministry of Education. His main research interest focused on the development of functional soft materials.