Biological therapeutics have revolutionized the way we treat cancer due to their ability to target tumors discriminately, leaving healthy cells unaffected. However, our inability to tailor the structure of biologics may hamper their optimization for efficacy. This lack of programmability contributes to factors such as immunogenic responses, inability to penetrate...
Dynamic covalent chemistry (DCC) combines the strength and directionality of covalent bonds with the reversibility of supramolecular interactions. The formation and stability of these bonds are typically regulated by parameters such as temperature, pH, concentration, catalyst loading and light. Light is an exceptionally powerful stimulus because it can be applied...
Crystalline and Framework materials make up a broad class of structures which are known for their precise and regular nature. Because these materials have predictable structures and compositions to their networks, they are widely used for several applications including electronics, optics, and catalysis. While these materials are of particular interest,...
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...
Cobalt(III) Schiff-base complexes (Co(III)-sb) have been utilized in the literature as antibacterial, antiviral, and inhibitory agents. Recent work has utilized their ability to displace endogenous metals from metalloproteins that exhibit aberrant gain of function pathologies in human disease. Specifically, in this dissertation Co(III)-sb has been applied as inhibitors of pathogenic...
The study of solid-state organic chromophores has been soaring in the last decade owing to their wide applications in organic photovoltaics. These organic chromophores can absorb light in the visible region and form free charge carriers with proper design in molecular structure and device fabrication. In solid state, chromophores are...
Peptides consists of a series of amino acids connected via an amide type of covalent chemical bond. A diverse field of applications such as biosensors,2 catalysis,4 and biomedicine6 include the oligomeric forms of peptides due to their genuine features comparing to other biomacromolecules. Particularly, peptides in the field of biomedical...
Realizing electromagnetic metamaterials which operate in the optical regime requires creating precise arrangements of sub-100 nm building blocks. As such, fabricating these materials using conventional lithographic methods is extremely costly. On the other hand, bottom-up assembly of nanoparticles into crystalline superlattices offers opportunities to explore the scalable fabrication of 2-...
Semiconductor nanocrystals possess unique photophysical properties that make them desirable for many optoelectronic applications such as photovoltaics, LEDs, and quantum computing. When the size of a semiconductor is reduced to below the excitonic Bohr radius of the material, its carriers becomes quantum confined resulting in drastic changes to optical, electronic,...
The demand for low cost, unconventional electronics requires new materials with unique characteristics that the traditionally used silicon-based technologies cannot provide. Metal oxide semiconductors, such has amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO), have made impressive strides as alternatives to amorphous silicon for electronics applications. However, to achieve the full potential...
Soft functional materials are fundamentally interesting from a chemistry standpoint and have exciting applications in robotics, chemical and biomolecule sensing, and biomedical engineering. In addition, soft materials are also useful in lithography, particularly cantilever-free scanning probe lithography (CFSPL). Because of their low modulus, biocompatibility, stimuli responsiveness, malleability, and other characteristics,...
Among the most valuable applications of organometallic chemistry is its implementation in the field of catalysis. Many industrial processes rely heavily on catalysis, employing organometallic complexes in the production of commodity chemicals, fine chemicals, materials, and even in the discovery and development of pharmaceuticals. Through decades of intense study, homogeneous...
In an era of personalized medicine, the clinical community has become increasingly focused on understanding diseases at the cellular and molecular level. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a powerful imaging modality for acquiring anatomical and functional information. However, it has limited applications in field of molecular imaging due to low...
Two-dimensional (2D) hybrid halide perovskites have been the response to their exciting but woefully unstable 3D counterparts. These 2D perovskites have been shown to have respectable stabilities as photovoltaic absorbers, yet they lag behind the 3D perovskites in terms of efficiency. With the need to catch up to the efficiencies...
The ubiquitous role of water in biochemical, electrochemical, and geochemical systems has driven scientific interest in studying the fundamental hydrogen-bonding interactions that water molecules exhibit in the presence of different materials.Specifically, we focus on the interactions characterizing water at the interface between two bulk media, as these are essential to...
This work examines important heterogeneous processes of organic molecules on surfaces, in the contexts of atmospheric and indoor environments. In large forest ecosystems, biogenic secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) constitute a dominant fraction of organic particulate matter in the atmosphere. The formation of SOAs starts from the emission of volatile organic...
The translation of proteins as effective intracellular drug candidates is limited by the challenge of cellular entry and their vulnerability to degradation. To advance their therapeutic potential, cell-impermeable proteins can be readily transformed into protein spherical nucleic acids (ProSNAs) or encapsulated into liposomal spherical nucleic acids (L-SNAs), structures defined by...
The use of light to understand detailed electronic structure and chemical properties of a molecule through light-matter interaction is fundamentally essential to design and analyze any chemical system. Over the past decades, rapid developments on optics and laser techniques improved the detection efficiency of multiphoton processes with more detailed chemical...
Proteins are known to have diverse biomedical functions and excellent catalytic performance; however, they are also fragile outside living cells, challenging their use in industrial applications. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are highly porous crystalline materials that consist of metal cluster nodes and organic linkers. With their rigid structures, MOFs can effectively...
Noble metal nanoparticles (NPs) have shown promise as imaging agents, drug delivery platforms, and plasmonic sensors. Anisotropic gold NPs, such as gold nanostars, have particularly received attention due to their shape-dependent optical and spectral properties. With their 3D anisotropic structure with branches protruding into different directions and high surface areas,...