EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

The bottom-up approach provides almost endless possibilities toward the creation of molecular based materials with designs that can be tuned by learning-doing cycles using structural-functional correlations.
Curcuminoids (CCMoids) are small conjugated molecules increasingly studied in the fields of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology due to their straightforward synthesis and purification, versatile chemistry and reasonable yields, being attractive as low-cost materials as well. In the last years, my group has studied these bio-inspired molecules coordinated to 3d/4f metal centers toward the creation of potential anticancer agents, single-molecule magnets and coordination polymers. In addition, CCMoids can provide a variety of dimensional species, from single coordination molecules and chains to 2D/3D structures.
Lately, we concentrate our efforts on the creation of T-shaped CCMoids. The structural features of such family of molecules allow us the deposition of CCMoids on functionalized substrates, keeping available further groups (e.g.: the b-diketone, for coordination, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon groups (PAHs), toward their luminescent properties). In this way, we can create patterns on substrates, identify our molecules through fluorescence and used them as sensors of 3d metals/metalloid centers, in particular, we concentrate our studies on boron units. Furthermore, these molecules are designed to explore the electronic transport at room temperature between graphene electrodes, functioning the CCMoid as a nanowire.
Our work emphasizes the potential of CCMoids as multifunctional materials and key components in electronic devices and sensors owing to their thorough design. Here, I would like to highlight their use on surfaces/electrodes to create 2D hybrid materials and their future applications.