Leslie Leiserowitz The Patricia Elman Bildner Professor of Solid State Chemistry Department of Materials and Interfaces Weizmann Institute of Science Rehovot 76100, Israel Tel. 972-8-9343727 E-mail:   leslie.leiserowitz@weizmann.ac.il

Functional 2- and 3-dimensional Crystals

One of the central challenges of modern materials science is the ability to design and prepare functional materials starting from the atomic or molecular level. The materialization of this goal demands the discovery of new synthetic methods for the preparation of new nano-materials and discovery of new analytical tools with the help of which we may probe the structures of such nano-architectures.

In recent years our scientific efforts were directed toward surface science. Our group has been among the pioneers in applying grazing incidence x-ray diffraction, using coherent x-rays from synchrotron sources, for analyzing the structure of crystallites of nanometer dimensions, formed at liquid interfaces. The ability to analyze the structures of these clusters on the molecular level allowed us to address a number of fundamental problems, that include the following:

• The induced nucleation of super-cooled water, by amphiphilic alcohols spread on drops of water
  
• Spontaneous resolution of racemates, in two-dimensions, at the air/water interface; model systems for the origin of chirality on earth
• The monitoring of the early stages of crystallization of cholesterol, in relevance to the formation of gall-stones
• Design of synthetic auxiliary molecules for controlling crystal polymorphism, large-scale resolution of enantiomers by crystallization of materials of pharmaceutical interest, etc.
• Structural studies of the dynamics of ionophores (molecules that transfer ions through biological membranes) embedded within membrane-like materials, in relevance to the understanding of the mechanism of ion transfer via membranes
• Self-organization of molecules into multilayers at the interface, en route to crystal formation
• Organometallic supramolecular architectures formed at interfaces and their inter-conversion into superlattices of quantum particles; the latter materials should display unique opto-electronic properties
• Organization of the molecules at the air/solid interface and the role played by molecules of the environment on crystal growth

Relevant Publications:

1. I.Weissbuch et al.
   In Advances in Chemical Physics, 1997, 102,39-120.
2. I.Weissbuch et al.
   J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 1997, 119, 933.
3. H. Rappaport et al.
   J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 1997, 119, 11211.