Exploiting the Supramolecular Chemistry of Carbon Nanohoops and Their Potential in Aqueous Applications

Carbon nanomaterials have a wide variety of proposed applications spanning across many different fields. Since their fairly recent isolation, many of these applications are actively being investigated, however those that take place in aqueous media remain relatively underexplored due to challenges with solubility. Carbon nanohoops or [n]CPPs are small molecules that can be synthesized in atom precise ways not possible with other carbon nanomaterials and are therefore poised to serve as model systems to explore aqueous applications of carbon nano-systems.Chapter I provides a discussion of the supramolecular chemistry of CPPs and their derivatives. Chapter II describes the development of a modular synthesis of fully water-soluble carbon nanohoops of varying sizes. The following chapter (III) will delve into the study of these water soluble nanohoops as hosts for other carbon nanomaterials in water and other polar environments towards better understanding how carbon nanomaterials behave in aqueous media. Chapter IV will discuss the development of a nanohoop-based rotaxane as a fluorescent sensor for biologically relevant analyte hydrosulfide anion. Chapter V will detail the further development of the rotaxane sensors as a modular family of sensors for a variety of different biological analytes. In summary the findings in this dissertation provide synthetic strategies for the development of carbon nanohoops towards use in biological and aqueous systems. This dissertation includes previously published and unpublished co-authored material.2023-04-1