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

To equip scientists with powerful tools to help sustain and support our planet, Professor Leonard MacGillivray will add his expertise in crystal engineering, a recent discipline in chemistry with offshoots in green chemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry, and materials science.

Green chemistry is the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use or production of toxic solvents. It is defined as the design and synthesis of solid-state molecular structures, through the deliberate use of intermolecular interactions, to achieve desired physical properties such as reactivity, or solubility, for example. The field of research aimed at controlling the structures of molecular crystals is called crystal engineering. It is a modern approach to solid state chemistry.

Crystal engineering offers an ability to tailor properties of molecular solids by gaining control of the three-dimensional arrangement that atoms and molecules adopt in space with atomic precision. This field has many potential applications, from synthetic organic chemistry to medicine, but it could also be used to solve problems linked to climate change and energy storage.

Sustainable materials, on the other hand, are materials used in a consumer and industrial economy that can be produced in the volumes required without depleting non-renewable resources.

In this application, crystal engineering will be developed as a multifaceted approach to advancing innovations in green chemistry and sustainable materials research.

The Canada Excellence Research Chair in Crystal Engineering for Green Chemistry and Sustainable Materials aims to develop new and innovative approaches for green chemistry and sustainable materials.

The specific objectives are to develop, understand, and exploit research in crystal engineering in four areas:

• Novel approaches to synthesize organic molecules in the solid state
• Novel methods to develop crystalline organic semiconductors and molecular solar-thermal energy materials
• Innovative approaches in medicine using pharmaceutical cocrystals and reactions and crystals
• Accelerated efforts towards crystal engineering for green chemistry and sustainable materials design

Two laboratories will be dedicated to this excellence research chair led by Professor MacGillivray’s research. Leonard MacGillivray will have a laboratory in the Department of Chemistry at the Faculty of Science. His second laboratory will be at the Pharmacology Institute of Sherbrooke (IPS), a world-renowned and unique institute in the field of drug discovery.

The Canada Excellence Research Chair in Crystal Engineering for Green Chemistry and Sustainable Materials is funded by the Canada Excellence Research Chairs Program and total $8 million spread over 8 years.

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