UJI's Institute of Advanced Materials secures two Prometeo projects to develop new chiral materials and a new generation of enzyme-inspired catalysts (IMAGE)
Caption
Two research teams from the University Institute of Advanced Materials at Universitat Jaume I de Castelló, led by Iván Mora Seró and Beatriu Escuder, and by Vicent Moliner and Macarena Poyatos, will develop two Prometeo projects aimed at obtaining new chiral materials for energy and catalysis and a new generation of catalysts that mimic the behaviour of enzymes. The Generalitat Valenciana has awarded each team a grant of more than €500,000.
The Prometeo programme is the Generalitat Valenciana’s most scientifically demanding funding scheme. It is aimed at groups with an established research track record that are capable of conducting frontier research, attracting talent and successfully participating in major national and European competitive programmes such as Horizon Europe and the European Research Council (ERC).
The CHIRAL-Solutions project (Chiral Materials Solutions for Energy and Catalysis), led by Iván Mora Seró and Beatriu Escuder, aims to harness the chirality of materials — the geometric property whereby a structure cannot be superimposed on its mirror image, as with hands — to tune chemical reactivity and selectivity, optical activity, mechanical properties and charge dynamics. These properties could be exploited in a wide range of photoelectrochemical systems and optoelectronic devices, as well as in asymmetric catalysis.
The BIOSWITCH project, meanwhile, proposes a combined theoretical and experimental approach to the rational design of multifunctional bio-inspired catalysts. Led by Vicent Moliner and Macarena Poyatos, the project aims to create a new generation of versatile and switchable bio-inspired catalysts capable of carrying out complex chemical transformations and modulating their activity and selectivity in response to external stimuli such as light, the presence of certain ions or redox changes — in other words, mimicking the behaviour of enzymes.
Credit
Universitat Jaume I of Castellón
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