Thiol-Ene Click Chemistry as Platform for the Fabrication of Versatile Materials

ChEMS Seminar

Featuring Luis M. Campos, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Scholar
Materials Research Laboratory
UC Santa Barbara

Location: Information and Computer Science (ICS), Room 174
Free and open to the public

Abstract:
Recently, the philosophies of “click” chemistry and robust, efficient, and orthogonal reactions have triggered applications of soft materials in a wide variety of disciplines from biology, engineering, and physics, among others. Within the set of click transformations, the copper-catalyzed Huisgen cycloaddition reaction has received much attention due to its orthogonal nature. More recently, the coupling reaction between thiols and alkenes (thiol-ene) is rapidly gaining momentum due to its short reaction timescales, insensitivity to oxygen inhibition, ability to proceed with or without solvent, orthogonality, and high degrees of efficiency. By taking advantage of thiol-ene click chemistry, a set of materials that display outstanding characteristics to be employed in various disciplines involving large-area functional systems has been developed. The talk will highlight current results from the projects employing thiol-ene based materials for the development of new polymer systems for soft lithography (including light extraction strategies from GaN LEDs), synthesis of well-defined macromolecules, and synthetic matrices for cell cultures and stem cell differentiation.

About the Speaker:
Luis M. Campos was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and received a B.Sc. degree in chemistry from CSU Dominguez Hills (2001) and a Ph.D. degree from UCLA (2006). After leaving CSU Dominguez hills, he conducted research at King's College, London, with S. Wilsey.  Then, in 2001, he joined the laboratories of M. A. Garcia-Garibay and K. N. Houk at UCLA. While at UCLA, he visited the laboratories of D. G. Truhlar at the University of Minnesota (2003), and N. S. Sariciftci at the Linz Institute for Organic Solar Cells (Austria, 2004 and 2005). He is now a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratory of C. J. Hawker at UC Santa Barbara.