Computational discovery of molecular C60 encapsulants with an evolutionary algorithm
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Published version
Author(s)
Miklitz, Marcin
Turcani, Lukas
Greenaway, Rebecca L
Jelfs, Kim
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Computation is playing an increasing role in the discovery of materials, including supramolecular materials such as encapsulants. In this work, a function-led computational discovery using an evolutionary algorithm is used to find potential fullerene (C60) encapsulants within the chemical space of porous organic cages. We find that the promising host cages for C60 evolve over the simulations towards systems that share features such as the correct cavity size to host C60, planar tri-topic aldehyde building blocks with a small number of rotational bonds, di-topic amine linkers with functionality on adjacent carbon atoms, high structural symmetry, and strong complex binding affinity towards C60. The proposed cages are chemically feasible and similar to cages already present in the literature, helping to increase the likelihood of the future synthetic realisation of these predictions. The presented approach is generalisable and can be tailored to target a wide range of properties in molecular material systems.
Date Issued
2020-01-22
Date Acceptance
2019-12-20
Citation
Communications Chemistry, 2020, 3
ISSN
2399-3669
Publisher
Nature Research (part of Springer Nature)
Journal / Book Title
Communications Chemistry
Volume
3
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Sponsor
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC)
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (E
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC)
Commission of the European Communities
The Royal Society
The Royal Society
Grant Number
EP/M017257/1
EP/N004884/1
EP/P005543/1
758370
URF\R\180012
RGF\EA\181066
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 10