- 14.30-15.30 – Seminar (Lecture Theatre B10)
- 15.30-16.00 – Refreshments and Networking (MSRH cafe, ground floor)
- 16.00-16.30 – Tours of White City facilities – to book your place, contact Steph Pendlebury; first come, first served!
Abstract
Selective, robust and cost-effective chemical sensors for detecting small volatile-organic compounds (VOCs) have widespread applications in industry, healthcare and environmental monitoring. We have designed a series of Pt(II) “pincer”-type materials with a selective absorptive and emissive response to various VOCs through rapid colour changes. Stable “smart coatings” on glass demonstrate robust switching over 104cycles for the most promising of these materials, and flexible microporous polymer membranes incorporating microcrystals of the complexes show similar vapochromic behaviour. From a combination of structural characterization and quantum-chemical modelling, we provide a clear microscopic picture of the switching mechanism.
Biography
Paul Raithby completed his Ph D in Structural Inorganic Chemistry at Queen Mary, University of London, and then moved to Cambridge to take up a post-doctoral post with Lord Lewis and Professor Brian Johnson to work on transition metal clusters. He remained in Cambridge for the next 25 years being promoted to a Reader in 1998. In 2000 he moved to the Chair of Structural Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Bath. His research spans aspects of chemical crystallography, including time-resolved crystallography, structural coordination chemistry and organometallic polymer characterisation. He was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Corday Morgan Medal and Prize (1988) and the RSC Prize for Structural Chemistry (2008). He has over 850 publications and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and was President of the British Crystallographic Association (2006-2009). He was an EPSRC Senior Research Fellow (2006-2011) and sat on the EPSRC Strategic Advisory Network (2011-2016). He has been senior investigator on a number of large grants including the EPSRC sponsored Dynamic Structural Science Consortium(2011-2016) and the EPSRC Programme Grant in Functional Materials(2012-2018). Between 2010-2017he was the PI of the EPSRC Grand Challenge Network entitled “Directed Assembly of Extended Structures with Targeted Properties”.
About IMSE
The Institute for Molecular Science and Engineering (IMSE) is one of Imperial College London’s Global Institutes, drawing on the strength of its four faculties to address some of the grand challenges facing the world today. The Institute’s activities are focused on tackling problems where molecular innovation plays an important role.
The Highlight Seminar Series brings eminent speakers from across the globe to Imperial to increase awareness of areas where molecular science and engineering can make a valuable contribution and to promote exchanges with academic and industrial centres of excellence.
How do I get there?
The Molecular Sciences Research Hub is on the North part of Imperial’s White City Campus. Campus information and map. There is a free shuttle bus between the South Kensington and White City campuses for Imperial staff and students – timetable here.
Visitors to the building should sign in at the reception desk. Lecture Theatre B10 is in the basement of MSRH (fully accessible).