The Design of Nanostructured Biomimetic Catalysts

Imagine pressing a key against a chunk of soft clay, leaving an accurate imprint of the key in the clay. This “key-clay-profile” can be used to make copies of the original one. Now imagine that, instead of the key, one manages to use a single molecule. One application is particularly important. Consider two molecules that are mirror images of each other (like your hands). Such molecules are called enantiomers and their mixtures are called racemic mixtures. A number (and this number is growing) of small drug molecules are produced as such mixtures, however, only one of the enantiomers can be used as a drug. This is because the other enantiomer is inactive or, even worse, can cause an adverse reaction, e.g. ethambutol where one enantiomer treats tuberculosis and the other causes blindness!

Separation of racemic mixtures is a difficult task. It has been suggested that a catalyst featuring molecular imprints can be built and can be used for the production of single enantiomer building components. The imprints in the catalyst will be "negative" images of the needed molecule and therefore only these molecules should be able to fit and adopt that specific form of the desired product.

Chiral synthesis and separations for pharmaceutical applications belongs to a market worth £100 billion.

Excellent applicants are invited to compete for this year University Research Studentships Allowance (URSA) to work as a PhD student towards The Design of Nanostructured Biomimetic Catalysts.

To understand the molecular recognition mechanism and to prepare better catalysts with molecular recognition capacity it is necessary to know what happens inside these materials. However, this is not an easy experiment. A more efficient approach is to construct a virtual model that imitates the real system and uses a computer to calculate its properties. This is called the computer simulation approach.

The University Research Studentships Allowance (URSA) is extremely competitive. For Home/EU applicants it cover fees, a generous tax-free allowance of about £ 13,500 per year and a training support grant. Please note that for OS applicants this scholarship provides only tuition fees.
Applicants should hold or expect to gain a UG First Class /MSc Distinction background, or the equivalent from an overseas institution. English language requirements must be satisfied in advance of an offer of funding, by IELTS (International English Language Testing System) only. No offers of funding will be made conditional on IELTS result.

PhD candidates from relevant scientific/engineering backgrounds will be considered, including Chemical Engineering, Biochemical Engineering, Physics, Chemistry and Material Science.

Prospective candidates are encouraged to contact Dr Carmelo Herdes (C.E.Herdes.Moreno (at) bath.ac.uk) directly for further details. Please send a CV and a cover letter to Dr Herdes no later than 30th November 2015. Candidates will be shortlisted for the full online application.