Adam Piotr Wdowiak

Adam completed his MSc with First Class Honours at the University of Bristol in 2018. His Master’s thesis focused on work towards elucidating the biosynthesis of the antibiotic mupirocin. He worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at UWA for 6 months in 2018-19, before commencing his PhD studies in May 2019.

Adam’s current work entails the design and synthesis of heterotriangulenes – a class of polycyclic aromatic compounds with unique structures and properties.

The first part of the project focuses on phosphangulenes - the phosphorus-centred analogues of the better-known azatriangulenes, which have applications in solar cells and OLEDs, as well as self-assembling to form supramolecular networks. The large central phosphorus atom imparts a smooth curvature to phosphangulenes, giving rise to potential uses in host-guest chemistry. Unlike their nitrogen counterparts, the lone pair of electrons on the phosphorus does not participate in the aromatic system, making them potential ligands for metal coordination complexes. The curvature and a relatively high (predicted) lone pair inversion barrier permits the synthesis of C₃-symmetric, intrinsically chiral compounds, which could find use in asymmetric catalysis.

The second part of the project focuses on triazatriangulenes, which are nitrogen-bridged, carbon-centred compounds. These form self-assembled monolayers on gold surfaces, and have demonstrated utility as good contacting groups for single-molecule conductance studies. The project aims to synthesise a range of targets for further investigation of their conductivity.

This work is supervised by A/Prof. Matthew J. Piggott (supervisor) and Prof. George A. Koutsantonis (co-supervisor).

Adam is a recipient of the Forrest Research Foundation Scholarship and the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

This work is partially funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (grant DNRF93).

2018-19 – Graduate Research Assistant, School of Molecular Sciences, UWA

Polish (native), English (near-native), German (basic)