Canada Excellence Research Chair in Crystal Engineering for Green Chemistry and Sustainable Materials

The Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Crystal Engineering for Green Chemistry and Sustainable Materials focuses on crystal engineering for green chemistry and sustainable materials. Led by Professor Leonard MacGillivray, it applies the principles of supramolecular chemistry - a field that links chemistry, physics and biology by exploiting non-covalent bonds - to organic solids.

This enables our research team to design crystals for a variety of applications, some of which include:

The exploration of organic solid state reactivity

The ability to make covalent bonds in the organic solid state impacts fields ranging from organic synthesis (e.g. new molecules) to green chemistry (e.g. solvent-free synthesis) to materials science (e.g. information storage). We use ditopic template molecules (e.g. resorcinol) to direct the formation of covalent bonds in solids. Both hydrogen-bond and coordination-driven self-assembly are used to position olefins in multi-component assemblies in solids for [2+2] photodimerizations.

The development of semiconductor materials

Organic semiconductors molecules (e.g. pentacene) are leading candidates in the design of flexible electronics (e.g. electronic paper). We have shown how organic semiconductors can be forced to stack into face-to-face arrangements in solids. We introduced a class of semiconductor materials known as ‘semiconductor cocrystals’ where we showed that cocrystallizations of organic semiconductors afford π-stacking arrangements. We are collaborating with Prof. Alexei Tivanski (Dept. of Chem., UI) to study the electrical properties of the semiconductor solids.

The development of pharmaceutical cocrystals

The bulk properties of an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) (i.e. drug molecule) can be altered using molecules that cocrystallize with an API to give a new solid form. We have described cocrystals involving caffeine and carboxylic acids based on competing hydrogen-bonded heteromolecular synthons. We have also described the first pharmaceutical nanococrystals and a unique role of tautomers in cocrystal design and formation. We are collaborating with Dr. Geoff Zhang of Abbott Laboratories (Chicago, IL) to develop targeted pharmaceutical cocrystal materials.

With laboratory space in the chemistry department of on the main campus of the Université de Sherbrooke (UdS) and the Institut de pharmacologie de Sherbrooke (IPS) and access to state-of-the-art instrumentation the MacGillivray research group is well placed to make Québec a global leader in the field of crystal engineering. Join us as we pave our way to a greener future one crystal at a time. For more information on our research check out research themes page or have a look at some of our most recent publications.