Dr Flavia Pop
At the recent Journées André Collet de la Chiralité conference, the jury selected Dr Flavia Pop for her poster entitled “Hierarchical Self-Assembly of Chiral C3-Symmetrical Tetrathiafulvalenes”. Flavia, who is now a teaching/research assistant at the University of Angers, carried out this work in the group of Narcis Avarvari in the Moltech Laboratory, in collaboration with the group of David Amabilino in Barcelona and with the contribution of Mathieu Linares at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Her winning poster presents compounds of C3 symmetry based on electroactive TTF grafted onto a 1,3,5-tris(amido-2,2’-bipyridine-amido)benzene core. Stereogenic centres attached to the TTF units provide self-assembled homochiral architectures (see Figure 1), like helical aggregates of preferential helicity twist. Different chiral alkyl branches were used (isopentyl, citronellyl and dihydrocitronellyl), leading to the formation of fibres or croissants whose helicity was connected with the nature of the alkyl chain, its stereochemistry and the employed conditions.
Figure 1. Self assembly of a TTF-grafted C3 core
Flavia obtained her Ph.D. degree in 2009 from the Universities of Babes-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca (Romania) and Angers (France) under the joint supervision of Prof. Ion Grosu and Dr. Jean Roncali. She has continued her research since then at the University of Angers in the field of molecular materials based on electroactive tetrathiafulvalene as the donor in radical cation salts, covalent donor-acceptor systems and chiral disk-shape molecules.
Congratulations to Flavia for her NJC Poster Prize from the NJC team!
