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Self-assembly is a general principle in nature to develop life and provide responses to any changes. Within this, small units are linked together to form bigger aggregates and, by growing, proteins and other huge molecules are formed. To mimic such biochemical processes on a simple chemical platform Professor Scheer's group uses five-fold symmetric building blocks to form spherical aggregates via self-assembly processes, which are nano-sized in dimension and able to host guests. While the group has been able to synthesise and characterise huge spherical molecules with the size of small and medium-sized proteins, the question of their usage and functionality is still an open topic to be solved. As a result, the group is trying to combine large spherical molecules, able for host-guest chemistry, with the advantages of 3 dimensional networks.

Biography

Professor Manfred Scheer studied chemistry at the University of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), where he received his Diploma in 1980 and his PhD in 1983, both in organometallic tin(II) chemistry. He completed his habilitation in the area of phosphorus chemistry at the university in 1992, after his postdoctoral research in the fields of solid state chemistry at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, and in main group-centred multinuclear metal-promoted catalysis at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim/Ruhr with Gerhard Wilke. Supported by a Feodor Lynen Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he spent a research stay as guest professor with Malcolm Chisholm at the Indiana University, Bloomington, USA in 1992/93. In 1993, he returned to Germany to join the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of Karlsruhe as a Heisenberg Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft where he was appointed Associated Professor of Chemistry (C3) in 1996. In 2004, he accepted the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Regensburg (Germany). His research interests include the synthesis and reactivity of unsubstituted main group element ligands with the focus on the heavier group 15 elements and their use in supramolecular chemistry to construct nano-sized spherical aggregates and clusters. His research also focuses on the stabilisation and reactivity of main group compounds consisting of combinations of different elements with the target of generating inorganic oligomers and polymers. His interests also extend to the chemistry of highly reactive molecules such as P4, As4 or compounds containing transition metal group 15 element multiple bonds.

It is a big honour and … the result of my long-term successful collaboration with many excellent British researchers …

Professor Manfred Scheer