Emilie Moulin

Fellowship 2015

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Emilie Moulin started her chemistry studies in Toulouse (ENSCT) and Paris (ENSPC) to become an engineer and graduated in chemistry in 2003 from University Pierre and Marie Curie - Paris VI. She then carried out her PhD (2003 - 2006) under the supervision of Prof. Nicolas Winssinger at the I.S.I.S. (Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires, Strasbourg) working on the total synthesis of resorcylic acid lactones so called pochonins. In 2007, she joined the group of Prof. Aloïs Fürstner at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany) working on the total synthesis of bioactive macrolides known as Iejimalides. For her stay in Germany, she was awarded two prestigious postdoctoral fellowships from the Association pour la Recherche sur le Cancer and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2008, she was appointed as a Chargée de Recherche CNRS (Assistant Professor) at the Institut Charles Sadron (Strasbourg) working in collaboration with Prof. Nicolas Giuseppone and defended her “Habilitation à diriger les recherches” in 2014. Her current interests include organic and supramolecular chemistry applied to the development of functional (bio-)materials. In particular, she has been instrumental in developing a) supramolecular triarylamine self-assemblies which display exceptional conducting properties and b) stimuli-responsive muscle-like materials based on molecular machines. For this work, she was awarded in 2015 the price “Les Espoirs de l’Université de Strasbourg”.

Supramolecular DNA-Triarylamine hybrids: towards self-assembled origami-based nanocircuits

Post-doc: Junjun Tan

A long-lasting objective in nanotechnology is oriented towards the bottom up fabrication of electronic circuits. To reach this goal, DNA molecules have been foreseen as promising tools since the late 90's. However, their limited and poorly reproducible electronic conductivity has weakened this approach. Several alternative strategies have been proposed to create conducting DNA hybrids with coated metals, semiconductors, and films of conductive polymers, but those lack selectivity and addressability, which are key parameters to access nanocircuits.

To overcome these issues, our project aims at integrating highly conductive supramolecular nanowires made of triarylamine molecules attached to a DNA template. This innovative methodology is expected to lead unique structural and functional features (high conductivity, soft mechanical properties, sequence specificity, addressability in 2D and 3D). By combining molecular chemical design and self-assembly principles, we hope to encode nanocircuits thanks to the self-organization of this new type of hybrid materials. Overall, this project shall impact the nascent field of biosupramolecular electronics.