Dr. Christopher Wilson
Nature presents many examples of self-assembly and self-organization of simple building blocks into complex functional assemblies, such as Photosystem II and Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV). Drawing inspiration from these elegant systems allows the construction of complex assemblies for use in advanced materials.

As an undergraduate, under the supervision of Prof John Goodby, post graduate, under the supervision of Dr. Georg Mehl and Dr Ross Boyle at the University of Hull and as a Research Scholar in the group of Prof Virgil Percec at the University of Pennsylvania I have developed my skills and expertise in the field of self-assembly in soft condensed matter.


Research interests:

1. Liquid crystalline materials exhibiting biaxiality in the nematic phase
2. Incorporation of biologically relevant molecules into advanced materials able to self-assemble and self-repair in both bulk and solution.
          a) Porphyrin based liquid crystalline materials.
          b) Self-assembly of BODIPY fluorophores as fluorescent materials.
          b) Design of monodisperse vesicular nanocarriers for drug delivery and cosmetic applications.
3. Development of new photonic devices based on biological and synthetic dyes encapsulated in well defined segregated columnar architectures.
5. Relationship of metal geometry on the stability and self-assembly of dipyrrin materials in the condensed state.
6. Coupling methodologies for the synthesis of new dendritic building blocks via nickel catalyzed coupling of biaryls



Recent projects:

1. Synthesis of room temperature liquid crystalline porphyrins exhibiting nematic and smectic liquid crystalline behavior
2. Self-assembly of dipyrrins and the effect of metal co-ordination on phase structure.
3. Synthetic strategies to cost effective efficient synthesis of biaryls from tosylates and mesylates exploiting nickel chemistry in cross coupling reactions of boronic esters.
4. Development and synthesis of complex libraries of biaryl dendrons and investigation of their self-assembly and subsequent retrostructural analysis of the columnar and cubic phases obtained by both XRD and molecular modeling.
5. Synthesis of novel semi fluorinated materials in collaboration with industrial partners for the development of new membrane technology for the petrochemical industry.
6. Part of a multi disciplinary team to design and investigate new self-assembling vesicular and micellar nano structures and their use in both drug delivery and cosmetics