2012 Participants
John Jolliffe
Many naturally occurring biological molecules, which are the key building blocks of complex life, have an intrinsic property of chirality, where a molecule is not super-imposable on its mirror image (e.g. your right hand is a mirror image of your left, but it is not the same). BODIPY dyes are a class of compounds which are used in fluorescence sensing (for example for medical purposes). So far axially chiral BODIPY’s have not been resolved into their two enantiomers (two mirror images). The aim of this project was to synthesize enough BODIPY for it to be resolved into its enantiomers and perform a full spectroscopic characterisation on these.
Funding source: Newcastle University