Metal-Oxide Polymerization Chemistry: From Molecular Vanadium Oxide Monomers to Supramolecular Oligomers and Polymers

State-of-the-art metal oxide chemistry lacks the ability to predictably design materials and their properties from the atomic level upwards.

This ability, however, would provide ultimate control over metal oxide structure and reactivity, leading to designer materials to deliver solutions in areas including information technologies and sustainable energy.

In addition, understanding the supramolecular chemistry which governs metal oxide aggregation is expected to provide fundamental insights into spontaneous structure organization and the rise of complexity in prebiotic chemistry.

SUPRAVOX proposes bottom-up vanadium oxide polymerization chemistry as a new design paradigm to bridge the gap between molecular building blocks and solid-state metal oxides.

This is achieved by developing chemically tuneable molecular vanadium oxide monomers as models for an industrially important metal oxide class.

The conception of rational supramolecular aggregation routes will enable the initiation, propagation and termination of vanadium oxide monomer growth into metal oxide oligomers and polymers.

SUPRAVOX will explore the chemical evolution of vanadium oxide oligomers in and out of thermodynamic equilibrium to develop reversible aggregation control beyond classical molecular chemistry.

This will lead to the first examples of inorganic systems chemistry and enable unique structural design approaches, such as self-sorting, self-recognition and stimuli-response. The technological relevance of the systems will be demonstrated by their electrode surface-deposition.

We propose that tuning of polymer structure and size will directly affect their electrochemistry based on quantum confinement effects.

In sum, SUPRAVOX will lay the synthetic and mechanistic foundations for metal oxide polymerization chemistry as a new paradigm for the controlled, bottom-up design of functional metal oxide nanostructures with impact on future metal oxide technologies.