Products and Processes via Self-Assembly

This 7th biennial GRC on Chemistry of Supramolecules and Assemblies will take place from June 28th - July 3rd at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

This conference sits exactly at the frontier among the biological and the physical sciences, with enormous implications for technologies based on them, and for solutions to major societal problems in energy, healthcare, and information technology. The chemistry of supramolecules is founded in synthetic chemistry to build information content into molecules, in order to create the spontaneous formation of structurally and functionally interesting assemblies. Supramolecular assemblies are formed by non-covalent interactions arising from hydrogen bonding, metal-ion coordination, p-stacking of aromatic groups, steric and packing considerations, hydrophobic and other solvation effects, van der Waals forces, and electrostatic forces. By virtue of the comparatively weak forces creating non-covalent assemblies, supramolecular chemistry is not driven by high thermal energy input, leading to possibilities for energy efficient manufacturing. Since biological self-assembly is a paradigm for synthetic supramolecular assembly the connection with physical bioscience, biomaterials and other biomedical disciplines is strong. Invitations are going out and are being accepted from a broad, diverse, international array of chemists, physicists, biologists and engineers at the forefront of the Chemistry of Supramolecules and Assemblies.