The Chirality-Directed Self-Assembly: Application Toward Design-Flexible Renewable/Recyclable Catalysts

With the support of the Chemical Catalysis Program in the Division of Chemistry, Professor Moteki and Professor Day of Marshall University are studying recyclable/renewable catalysts which play a crucial role in many industrial processes, which include, but not limited to, petroleum refining, chemical production, pharmaceuticals, polymer manufacturing, and energy production. Catalysts significantly lower the production cost by accelerating the production rate while reducing the amount of raw materials and energy needed, leading domestic industries to become highly competitive in the global market. Enhancing recyclability reduces a nation's reliance on foreign industries for materials, creating a more self-sufficient and sustainable economy. The department of chemistry at Marshall University, located in Huntington, West Virginia, serves students from the Tri-State area of West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky. The funds will be utilized to hire and train regional domestic students through cutting-edge research, preparing them to become highly skilled industry workers. The educational activities will also include student-led hometown outreach in West Virginia, inspiring the next generation of innovators. With the support of the Chemical Catalysis Program in the Division of Chemistry, Professor Moteki and Professor Day of Marshall University are studying design and construct renewable/recoverable homogeneous/heterogeneous catalysts using chirality-directed self-assembly as an underlying core technology. Catalysts are essential for industrial processes, from producing new pharmaceuticals to manufacturing various materials. Catalyst recycling significantly benefits the economy through resource conservation and cost reductions. The project seeks to create a more practical/economical approach to catalyst recycling by incorporating highly selective/efficient reversible self-assembly to generate a design-flexible recyclable/renewable catalyst system. This project will apply chirality-driven self-assembly to design and construct (1) a homogeneous catalysts recycling system where soluble catalysts are recovered from a reaction mixture through self-assembly using magnetic beads, (2) “in-situ” renewable catalyst stationary phase for continuous flow reactor where catalysts are exchanged without affecting functional integration of the catalyst support, and (3) recyclable “enzyme-like” self-assembled catalytic dendronized polymer where internal/external polarity differences enhances catalytic performance through a polarity gradient pump mechanism. The successful completion of the proposed research will lead to new designs of renewable/recoverable catalytic systems with revolutionary, rather than incremental, improvement in design flexibility over current state-of-the-art systems. Its importance is due to advances in constructing a multi-domain, multi-catalytic supramolecular structure through coordinating covalent bonds. In addition, the proposed system will be applied to a broader range of multi-step orthogonal tandem catalysis with a higher degree of self-sufficiency. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.