Chemistry Seminar

Dr. Paul Bonvallet, Professor of Chemistry, The College of Wooster

Fail Fast, Fail Forward: Towards the Synthesis of Stackable Electron Donors

Location: Ruth W. Williams Hall of Life Sciences, Room 045.

Organic chemistry has a role to play in meeting the global demand for energy. Porphyrin-based electron donors, which harvest light exceptionally well, have potential as the next generation of materials in solar energy conversion. Individual pieces can self-assemble into a stacked “molecular ladder” through hydrogen bonding and other noncovalent interactions. The design is beautiful, but the execution is… sometimes hard. Multi-step synthetic organic chemistry sometimes turns perfectly good ideas into challenges with solubility, reactivity, and fundamental design. These obstacles are common in research, so progress depends not so much on the absence of failure but the ability to evaluate experiments quickly and to learn from every step along the way.