The researcher has defended today her Doctoral Thesis.
Katherine Cobos Cabrera has defended today his Doctoral Thesis, directed by Félix Freire and Emilio Quiñoá at CiQUS (NanobioMol Group), focused on the control of the secondary structure of helical polymers and their applications in new chirality amplification phenomena through the effects known as "Sergeants and Soldiers" and "Chiral Coalition".
To achieve this goal, copolymers formed by two chiral units were prepared, where one of them has a preferred conformation (Sergeant) and the other does not (Soldier), establishing a “chiral-chiral” communication phenomenon between them.
These novel effects of amplification and communication of chirality in polymers, not previously studied, allow obtaining new dynamic chiral materials with response to external stimuli and that have potential applications in the development of sensors, of chiral stationary phases for HPLC, of reversible asymmetric catalysts, etc.
The first results from the Thesis have already been published in the prestigious journal The Journal of the American Chemical Society, in a paper entitled "Chiral-to-Chiral Communication in Polymers: A Unique Approach to Control both Helical Sense and Chirality at the Periphery".