The ERC CoG Project SUPRAVOX studies the formation of inorganic, metal oxide based oligomers and polymers from functional monomeric materials. To-date, state-of-the-art metal oxide chemistry lacks the ability to predictably design materials and their properties from the atomic level upwards. This ability, however, would provide ultimate control over metal oxide structure and reactivity, giving access to next-generation functional materials. Societal challenges in areas including information technology, sustainable energy and public health could thus be addressed by knowledge-based materials design. In addition, understanding the supramolecular chemistry which governs bottom-up metal oxide aggregation will provide fundamental insights into spontaneous structural organization and the rise of complexity in prebiotic chemistry. SUPRAVOX develops bottom-up vanadium oxide polymerization chemistry as a new design paradigm to bridge the gap between molecular building blocks and solid-state metal oxides. This will lead to a new class of materials, where novel chemical and electronic properties become accessible by atomically precise assembly of designer monomers. SUPRAVOX develops molecular vanadium oxide monomers with tuneable structure, composition and linkage chemistry as models for industrially important metal oxides. SUPRAVOX lays the synthetic and mechanistic foundations for metal oxide polymerization chemistry as a new paradigm for the controlled, bottom-up design of advanced nanostructured metal oxides with impact on global technologies including battery materials, electrocatalysis and sensing.
