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Research

Chemistry and Analytical Sciences

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Research in the Department of Chemistry is focused on two main areas, biomedicinal chemistry and analytical science, with an additional area of materials chemistry. Biomedicinal research (Yao, Missailidis, Bruce, Trigiante) forms part of the research effort of the inter-faculty Biomedical Research Network, and is largely, though not exclusively, directed toward various aspects of cancer, including development of molecules for cell recognition, modification of nucleic acid bases, imaging and targeting of cancer cells, and small molecule therapeutics. The analytical science area (Velasco, Turner, Turner, Pearson) overlaps to some extent with biomedicinal research, and involves sensor and biosensor development in health and disease, the identification and quantification of biomarkers of disease states, the design of molecular imprinted polymers and the analysis of extra-terrestial materials. Materials chemistry (Taylor, Crabb, Heeley) encompasses world-leading research on modified silsesquioxanes, together with the development of bimetallic catalysts and the crystallisation of polyalkenes.

Key facts

  • Research is supported by charitable (Breast Cancer Campaign, World Cancer Research Fund) and industrial (Dow Corning, HiChrom, Johnson Matthey, Lokpal, Antisoma) sources.
  • Publications in high impact factor journals including Science and Angewandte Chemie.
  • Patents for the imaging and targeting of cancer cells.
  • Collaborations with centres in Midland (USA), Nottingham (UK), Lisbon (Portugal), Patros (Greece), Catanzaro (Italy).

Facilities

Instrumentation within the department:

  • Jeol EX400 and LA300 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometers, the former with MAS capability
  • A ThermoFisher triple quadrupole GC/LC-MS
  • SIFT MS
  • Gas Chromatography (GC) Lab containing Agilent GC-MS, two Carlo Erba GC, Varian 3380 GC, AI 94GC TCD/FID/software, Bruker Minispec, Varian TCD GC TPR rig
  • Waters Alliance 2690 LC/DAD/Fluo, Waters Millenium LC/DAD/Fluo and Varian LC/DAD liquid chromatography instruments
  • Waters Delta Prep LC
  • Capillary Zone electrophoresis
  • Applied Biosystems DNA/RNA synthesiser and Expedite Nucleic Acid Synthesis
  • A Jobin Yvon/Horiba FluoromaxP fluorimeter
  • Uvikon UV-Visible spectrophotometer
  • Perkin Elmer 1710 FT-IR
  • X-ray Diffraction (XRD) D5000
  • Faraday Balance
  • Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM)
  • Rheometric Scientific Simultaneous Thermal Analyser
  • Modulyo freeze drier 

Instrumentation within the Interfaculty Electron Microscope Suite:

  • Zeiss Supra 55 field emission gun scanning electron microscope (FEGSEM) that can also be operated at variable pressure for vacuum-sensitive specimens.  The FEGSEM is an analytical EM including X-ray microanalysis for elemental detection
  • JEOL JEM 2000fx, 200kV high resolution transmission EM (TEM) with a STEM unit and X-ray microanalysis capability
  • JEOL JEM 1010, 100kV high contrast TEM equipped with an AMT XR40 digital camera with 2k x 2k pixels
  • JEOL JEM 1400 120kV TEM is fully computer-controlled and equipped with an AMT XR60 digital camera with 2.6 x 2.6 pixels.

Further information

If you have an enquiry specific to this research area please contact:

Name:
Astrid Peterkin
Email:
science-phd-enquiries@open. ac.uk
Phone:
+44 (0)1908 659845

For general enquiries please contact the Research Degrees Team via the link under 'Your questions' further down the page.

Publications

Research publications by Open University staff are available through Open Research Online (ORO), the university's repository of research publications and other research outputs. ORO can be searched or browsed by staff name or subject.

The following list, generated from ORO, provides a flavour of the most recently published work in Chemistry and Analytical Sciences: