Research stay at the University of Granada for (Chir)optical Measurements
From 10th December 2022 to 21st December 2022 I had the opportunity to spend one and a half weeks in the laboratories of Prof. Dr. Campaña at the University of Granada, Spain.For the greatest part of my doctoral studies, I have been dealing with the implementation of boron- and nitrogen atoms into small polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The goal of one of my projects was to prepare and characterize so-called helicenes, which are non-planar, chiral aromatic molecules. The Campaña group focuses on distorted nanographenes and their non-linear optical properties, so the labs are equipped with various instruments that are perfectly suitable for the analysis of the compounds prepared by me. Initially, I got to know the specialized instruments and their operations with great help from local group members. I am grateful that the following days allowed me to successfully perform the chiral resolution of two substances by HPLC and subsequent (chiral)-optical measurements like absorption, fluorescence, circular dichroism and circularly polarized luminescence. Besides the scientific progress, the scientific exchange on site was very fruitful and enjoyable. I hope that my stay can be the starting point for future collaboration between the research groups.
I greatly appreciate the financial support from the MAPEX Center for Materials and Processes, allowing me to obtain results that I could not have generated in Bremen, meeting fantastic people and partly escaping the German winter.