About us
We are a research group specialising in supramolecular chemistry based in the Research School of Chemistry at the Australian National University in Canberra. Thanks for visiting – please have a look around and email Nick if you have any questions.

Recent news

• Welcome to Dr Jordan Smith, who joins our group as a postdoc to work on supramolecular control of organocatalysis (funded by our Discovery Project with Megan O’Mara and Luke Connal).

• Rosie’s first first-author paper looking at anion recognition using a single very strong hydrogen bond is published in an Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry special issue on the Supramolecular Chemistry of Anions. This was work originally started by Alfred Fung right back when the group started at the end of 2015. Thanks to Michelle Coote’s team for pKa measurements and calculations.

• Welcome to Petch, who has moved from Newcastle to start a PhD in the group!

• Welcome to Jason, who joins the group for an undergraduate research project. He tried to do an undergraduate project last year but was thwarted mid-project by COVID19. Here’s hoping for better luck this time!

• Emer’s lockdown review of supramolecules assembled using hydrogen bonding or halogen bonding interactions between triazole/triazolium/halotriazole/halotriazolium groups and anions is published in Chemistry – An Asian Journal.

• In collaboration with Jona Foster (University of Sheffield, UK) we showed that we can make freestanding atomically-thin nanosheets of our hydrogen bonded frameworks. Remarkably, these nanosheets can withstand boiling water, and show promise for sensing applications. Out now in Chemical Science!

• Steph’s paper comparing silicon and carbon-centered hydrogen bonded frameworks is published in Chemistry – A European Journal. We thought silicon building blocks would be more flexible than ones based on carbon – turns out we were wrong!