Photochemistry allows chemists to harness the energy in specific wavelengths of light and use it to achieve new chemical transformations. These chemical transformations are often impossible or energetically demanding under traditional thermal conditions. My dissertation focuses broadly on different strategies to apply visible-light photochemistry and photocatalysis to the development of...
Part I: Evaluating the relationship between Crosslink Kinetics and Thermodynamics with the hydrogel mechanics. The past two decades have witnessed a surge of applications built upon dynamic covalent chemistry (DCC), both attributed to the scope of developed reactions as well as their modularity.1-3 These reactions have comparable strengths to their...
Part I:Current approaches to synthesize π-conjugated polymers are dominated by thermally driven, transition-metal-mediated reactions. Herein we7 show that electron-deficient Grignard monomers readily polymerize under visible-light irradiation at room temperature in the absence of a catalyst. The product distribution can be tuned by the wavelength of irradiation based on the absorption...
In this Thesis, I describe some recent developments in the field of artificial molecular machines to which I have made contributions. In Chapter 1, I survey the rise and promise of molecular nanotopology, a relatively new discipline focusing on molecular knots and links that offers unprecedented opportunities to access high-energy...
Cyclodextrin-based polymers (CDPs) are adsorbents based on supramolecular receptor chemistry and have emerged as a promising technology for organic micropollutant remediation. Micropollutants are small organic molecules which contaminate water systems from human related activities. The occurrence of micropollutants in water sources is associated with many negative health, economic, and ecological...
