CrystEngComm Blog

Hiroshi Yamamoto talks to CrystEngCommunity

19 July 2009

Hiroshi Yamamoto is based at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), Discovery Research Institute, Condensed Molecular Materials Laboratory in Saitama, Japan. His research focuses on molecular arrangements of crystalline materials for use as electric conductors and superconductors.

1) Why did you to become a scientist?
My father was also a scientist and it was quite natural for me to become a scientist. I also found a joy of science as I learned more about it.

2) What projects are you working on at the moment?
I have two projects now.
The first project is a chemical one where I study conduction properties of organic crystals with supramolecular assemblies. I’m especially interested in constructing a supramolecular insulating sheath to separate conducting organic nanowires from each other in the crystal.
The second project is a physical one. I’m making FET (field effect transistor) devices with organic charge transfer salts. My final aim for this project is to realize a phase transition transistor with high switching ability and a superconducting FET.

3) What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?
Here I restrict my fields to those related to the crystal engineering.
The first one that comes to my mind is a prediction of crystal structures by computation. I have discussed this possibility with my colleague and understood it is really a big challenge. But I think the impact of succeeding in a structure prediction is very high.
The second one is epitaxial growth of organic crystals. The importance of an interface between two crystals is now increasing quite rapidly in inorganic materials science. I’m quite sure that it will be a big breakthrough if you succeed in making an atomically flat interface between organic crystals.

4) How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?
Firstly, I think it’s quite important for crystal engineering to expand its power in controlling chemical and/or physical properties of the crystals. This point of view makes the crystal engineering a real ‘engineering’.
As a ‘tool’ for control of properties, desired structures should be constructed in the crystal. In the next five years, I think the simultaneous use of several kinds of intermolecular interaction will be developed in this field. To this end, relatively minor interactions like halogen bonds will be more and more important, as they can be complementary interactions to the major ones such as hydrogen bond and metal coordination.
This August, there will be a special session for halogen bond in the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington D.C. This session will be a nice occasion to discuss how halogen bond can be an effective intermolecular interaction in crystal engineering, although it is less known for many chemists for the moment.

5) What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?
I’m always excited when I see a new crystal structure. Every time it is beautiful enough to compensate for a lot of efforts to make it. It is also a great joy that I can discuss and share these beautiful entities with my colleagues and academic friends.

6) What is the secret to a successful research group?
Sharing a professional mind is an important basis, and after that, it is the most important thing to enjoy science.

7) What achievement are you most proud of?
I’m proud of being able to control conduction properties by constructing an insulating network. People tend to pay the highest attention to the conducting molecules in their development of conducting materials, but I found that the insulating moiety can play a big role when you consider an application use.

8 ) What advice would you give to a young scientist?
The darkest hour is just before the dawn.

9) What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?
Probably a teacher, because I like teaching.

10) What is your favourite place to be?
I like sea side places. It would be quite nice if there are a hammock and a refreshing sea breeze.

Related Links

Hiroshi Yamamoto’s homepage Condensed Molecular Materials Lab. RIKEN, Japan

01 July 2009

Pierangelo Metrangolo is an associate professor of fundamentals of chemistry for electronics at the Politecnico di Milano Technical University, Italy. His research focuses on the supramolecular chemistry of fluorinated derivatives, in particular halogen bonding and fluorous interactions, crystal engineering of porous networks, and liquid crystals.

1) Why did you want to become a scientist?

My father was a pharmacist and since the very first experiments we did together when I was a child I knew I wanted to study chemistry.

2) What projects are you working on at the moment?

At the moment I am working on the use of supramolecular interactions for controlling functional properties of materials like electro-optical phenomena or solid-state reactivity.

3) What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?

One of the major challenges today is the integration of biomimetics in the nanodomain. There is still a lot to do for achieving control over the formation of 10-nm nanostructures thus filling the gap between the top-down and bottom-up approaches in nanotechnology.

4) How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?

We will see, I believe, an increase in structures exhibiting an adaptive behaviour in the presence of environmental constraints or external stimuli. The use of flexible building blocks will replace that of stiff building materials.

5) What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?

I think being a university professor is one of the most rewarding jobs I know. It still surprises me how happy I always am when new scientific results are obtained or a paper is accepted.

6) What is the secret to a successful research group?

Motivation and trust. If your younger collaborators are highly motivated in the work they do, trust your suggestions and do not get frustrated just after the first failure, the whole research group benefits from it.

7) What achievement are you the most proud of?

I am very proud of the work my friend and colleague Giuseppe Resnati and I have done together in recent years on halogen bonding. Though Odd Hassel highlighted the possibilities opened in crystal engineering by charge-transfer interactions involving halogens in his Nobel lecture in 1969, halogen bonding did not receive much attention afterwards. Our recent work has drawn the interest of the international scientific community to this interaction, which is now definitely considered a useful tool to control intermolecular recognition processes.

8 ) What advice would you give to a young scientist?

Always place your research results in the broader context of the literature. I think that a very good literature search is the key to a successful research project.

9) What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?

I might be more active in politics, which still is not excluded as a future option.

10) What is your favourite place to be?

Abroad in general. It is very nice that my job offers the opportunity to travel a lot and meet people of many different countries and cultures.

Related Links
Pierangelo Metrangolo’s homepage at the Politecnico di Milano Technical University, Italy

Anion coordination and anion-templated assembly under halogen bonding control
Pierangelo Metrangolo, Tullio Pilati, Giancarlo Terraneo, Serena Biella and Giuseppe Resnati, CrystEngComm, 2009, 11, 1187

Mutual induced coordination in halogen-bonded anionic assemblies with (6,3) cation-templated topologies
Pierangelo Metrangolo, Frank Meyer, Tullio Pilati, Giuseppe Resnati and Giancarlo Terraneo, Chem. Commun., 2008, 1635

Halogen bonding and other noncovalent interactions involving halogens: a terminology issue
Pierangelo Metrangolo, Tullio Pilati and Giuseppe Resnati, CrystEngComm, 2006, 8, 946

21 May 2009

Neil Champness is the Professor of Chemical Nanoscience at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is also the current chair of the CrystEngComm editorial board. His research covers all aspects of molecular organisation and supramolecular chemistry.

Why did you become a scientist?

I probably became a scientist because I was always better at sciences when I was at school. I have always believed that you should use your talents for the benefit of others and for me that meant becoming a scientist.

What projects are you working on at the moment?

There are always a large number of projects going on in my group and our research is becoming more diverse all the time! A couple of projects which we are really enjoying are studies of new metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)  that support optically active substituents and another project on generating random structures on surfaces which we do in collaboration with Peter Beton’s group here in Nottingham. It is fun for a supramolecular chemist to use designed intermolecular interactions to generate random structures – it is like using order to create disorder. The irony appeals to me!

What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?

I think there are some very interesting things going on in translating our understanding of three-dimensional crystals to two-dimensional surface structures and vice versa. I think we are starting to learn a lot about how crystals begin to form and this could have an enormous impact on crystal engineering and on surface assembly in general.

How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?

I think there will be significant developments in the field of MOFs. Personally I feel that this is a field which is starting to mature and will lead to increasing commercialisation of these type of compounds for a variety of applications. In the wider crystal engineering field, I anticipate that people will get closer and closer to being able to predict structures ab initio. Structure prediction is a field that I think many researchers watch with fascination and there is some beautiful work going on.

What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?

I would be a politician. I have been quoted as saying this before and it is probably the comment which raises most surprise from other academics. I have strong political beliefs and my heroes tend to be politicians rather than scientists. Anyone who has visited me in Nottingham would know that I have a full-size campaign poster from Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign above my computer – I guess this will tell people something about me.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?

Working with the researchers in my group. There are few jobs where you get to interact with so many bright and enthusiastic people. I enjoying publishing but I also enjoy the sense of achievement that the researchers feel from their first few publications.

What is the secret to a successful research group?

The researchers, the PhD students and the postdocs. The reality is that it is the people in the lab who actually do things. Of course the group leader needs to nurture a sense of excitement about the research that is being done but ultimately it all comes down to the researchers.

What advice would you give to a young scientist?

Never lose hold of the big picture. It is very important to be ambitious – to try to solve important questions and not to get lost in the minutiae.

What achievement are you most proud of?

Probably the work we have done on surface self-assembly, using crystal engineering concepts to organise molecules on the nanoscale. I was recently told by a student that one of my papers was the first scientific paper they had ever read which somewhat surprised me. It is nice that our work is now covered in text books as well as it feels that our contribution is being passed on to undergraduate students.

What is your favourite place to be?

Naturally at home with my family. After that I guess it is a toss-up between being by the sea or watching my football club, Southampton. People who know anything about UK football will realise that watching Southampton is not normally too enjoyable for their fans!

Related links:

Neil Champness homepage

Hydrogen-bonding tectons for the construction of bimolecular framework materials
Jacqueline Hamblin, Stephen P. Argent, Alexander J. Blake, Claire Wilson and Neil R. Champness, CrystEngComm, 2008, 10, 1782 DOI: 10.1039/b811462e

Hydrogen storage in metal–organic frameworks
Xiang Lin, Junhua Jia, Peter Hubberstey, Martin Schröder and Neil R. Champness,
CrystEngComm, 2007, 9, 438 DOI: 10.1039/b706207a

24 February 2009

Christoph Janiak is professor of inorganic and analytical chemistry at the University of Freiburg, Germany. His research focuses on the construction of polynuclear complexes and coordination polymers, crystal engineering  and olefin polymerisation. He is a member of the Editorial Board of CrystEngComm.

Why did you to become a scientist?

My high school chemistry teacher got me hooked to chemistry. Ever since I got this subject in my 9th grade I knew I wanted to study chemistry.

What projects are you working on at the moment?

At the moment I am working on coordination polymers (nowadays more fashionably called MOFs), metal nanoparticles in ionic liquids, metal complexes and their supramolecular interactions and complexes for olefin polymerization and oligomerization.

What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in your field?

It is difficult to be a prophet, especially since we mostly tend to extrapolate from our present knowledge and therefore, it is difficult to imagine a really “unforeseeable” breakthrough. In chemistry at large I am waiting to see a “simple” system which can replicate itself (as an essential element of life).

How do you think crystal engineering will develop in the next five years?

I think we will see an increase in built-in complexity in molecular crystals for electrooptical phenomena or solid-state reactivity. I also think we will progress, with the help of computations, to predict and to quantitatively rationalize crystal packing, not just describe it.

What would you do if you weren’t a scientist?

I may have gone to law school.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?

To have, as a university professor, the freedom to decide what research I want to do and to work with young people.

What is the secret to a successful research group?

To give the young Master or Ph.D. students the freedom to follow their ideas – even if somewhat outside of your present research. That is how I recently started a project into the field of nanoscience.

What advice would you give to a young scientist?

To read, read, read in the journals so as to develop a broad perspective of chemistry and not to be too narrow in your research.

Can you tell us a little known fact about yourself?

I co-author textbooks in inorganic chemistry for B.Sc. and M.Sc. students and to keep in shape I jog and run a marathon once a year (that may be two facts!).