Educational Background:

PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2005 BS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000 William Dichtel joined the department in July 2008 following a joint postdoctoral appointment with Prof. J. Fraser Stoddart at UCLA and Prof. James R. Heath at the California Institute of Technology.

Awards:

•UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Postdoctoral Recognition Award (2008) •Finalist, UCLA Chancellor's Award for Postdoctoral Research (2008) •UC-Berkeley Teaching Effectiveness Award (2004) •UC-Berkeley Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award (2004)

Research Description:

Nanostructured materials exhibit a wealth of useful chemical, biological, electronic, and mechanical properties that emerge as a consequence of their small size. Fully realizing their potential involves the challenge of bridging length scales, either downward to control the molecule-material interface, or upward to organize and assemble these materials into micro- or macroscopic entities. For example, the rate of electron transfer between molecules and nanostructured materials is a critical parameter in many useful electronic and energy relevant devices, yet the toolbox for controlling the nature of the interface is still rather limited.

Our research group will utilize the tools of synthetic and supramolecular chemistry to address fundamental challenges in the assembly and integration of nanostructured materials. Students who undertake the study of these problems will develop a strong grounding in synthetic, polymer, and materials chemistry, enhanced by the experience of collaborating with leading experimentalists and theoreticians in a variety of cognate scientific and engineering disciplines.

Selected Publications:

Zhang, W.; Dichtel, W. R.; Stieg, A. Z.; Benitez, D.; Gimzewski, J. K.; Heath, J. R.; Stoddart, J. F. "Folding Induced in a Donor–Acceptor Polyrotaxane Using Secondary Noncovalent Bonding Interactions." Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 2008, 105, 6514-6519.

Miljanić, O. Š.; Dichtel, W. R.; Khan, S. I.; Mortezaei, S.; Heath, J. R.; Stoddart, J. F. "Structural and Co-conformational Effects of Alkyne-Derived Subunits in Charged Donor-Acceptor [2]Catenanes." J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007, 129, 8236-8246.

Dichtel, W. R.; Miljanić, O. Š.; Spruell, J. M.; Heath, J. R.; Stoddart, J. F. "Efficient Templated Synthesis of Donor-Acceptor Rotaxanes Using Click Chemistry." J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2006, 128, 10388-10390. (Highlighted as an ACS Hot Paper in May 2007)

Dichtel, W. R.; Baek, K.-Y.; Fréchet, J. M. J.; Rietveld, I. B.; Vinogradov, S. A. "Amphiphilic Diblock Star Polymer Catalysts via Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization." J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polm. Chem. 2006, 44, 4939-4951.

Dichtel, W. R.; Hecht, S.; Fréchet, J. M. J.; "Functionally Layered Dendrimers: A New Tetravalent Building Block and its Application to Multichromophoric Light Harvesting Systems." Org. Lett., 2005, 7, 4451-4454.

Dichtel, W. R.; Serin, J. M.; Edder, C.; Fréchet, J. M. J.; Mastuszewski, M.; Tan, L.-S.; Ohulchanskyy, T. Y.; Prasad, P. N. "Singlet Oxygen Generation via Two-Photon Excited FRET." J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2004, 126, 5380-5381.