PhD: with Professor Annie K. Powell at Karlsruhe University, Germany (2000-3)
Brookers Bunch visit: Jan-May 2002
I have been fortunate to, as part of my PhD at Karlsruhe University (Germany) help initiate a collaboration between the laboratories of Annie Powell (KU) and Sally Brooker (OU). The goal of this collaboration is to synthesize carefully designed macrocycles with the aim of encapsulating Fe-clusters within their large macrocyclic cavities. As certain cluster motifs appear to form commonly the goal of templating macrocycles around cluster cores also seems realistic although it is far more challenging. As part of the collaboration I was able to visit Sally’s labs for a period of 5 months in 2002. This allowed us to begin to understand, and try to integrate, the approaches of macrocyclic and cluster chemistry. During this time we were able to synthesize some large macrocycles for complexation studies. We now have a small group in Karlsruhe working on the project and hopefully further exchanges of group members should be possible in the near future.
