Apr 8, 2025
10:30am - 11:00am
Summit, Level 3, Room 324
Samuel Stupp1
Northwestern University1
The living world utilizes
supramolecular materials in which molecules self-assemble through highly specific noncovalent connections programmed by their structures. Yet, this powerful strategy is a newcomer in materials science that along with current computational advances could create novel functional soft matter. Our laboratory has focused over the past few decades on this journey, aiming to exploit bio-inspired supramolecular engineering as a tool to design materials. The lecture will discuss three examples of functional supramolecular materials that address critical needs for humans and the planet. The first is inspired by the photosynthetic machinery of green plants, creating materials that harvest light to produce hydrogen peroxide as a potential liquid fuel for renewable energy. The second example will report on a recent breakthrough on supramolecular ferroelectrics that combine chemistry inspired by proteins and plastics to generate materials that could function to store information or energy depending on the peptide sequences used. The third topic will be supramolecular biomaterials that mimic extracellular matrices and provide unprecedented bioactivity to regenerate brain tissues. The lecture will demonstrate how the tuning of the unique dynamic behavior of supramolecular materials is behind their remarkable potential.