Faculty of Technology Student Receives Werner von Siemens Award
24. March 2025A postgraduate at the TBU has been presented with the prestigious Werner von Siemens Award for the best Master’s thesis. Ing. Jiří Navrátil, from the Department of Chemistry, received the prize in 2024 for his thesis entitled Synthesis of a ligand based on 4,9-disubstituted diamantane and the study of its supramolecular properties. An exploration of supramolecular chemistry, it deals with the mutual interactions of molecules and formation of complex systems, referred to as host-guest complexes. These comprise groupings in which a guest molecule (a ligand) binds to the cavity of the host molecule, something akin to stringing beads on a thread.
The aim of his research was to devise a new ligand based on diamantane, and then to investigate its supramolecular behaviour.
Jiří Navrátil recalled: “The notion of synthesizing a molecule with a previously undescribed structure, and studying its supramolecular behaviour afterwards, immediately caught my attention.” His eventual findings were surprising and illuminative, but getting to that point was far from easy.
Jiří started out on the cusp of the second year of his studies, his efforts paying off after three years of hard work. He managed to obtain milligrams of the ligand, which proved capable of forming highly stable complexes with macrocycles from the cyclodextrin family. A surprising discovery was that complexes of it arose through interactions with multiple macrocyclic compounds, i.e. with the same compounds and different ones concurrently. Such a novel diamantane-based ligand has never been described in scientific literature before.
Jiří is highly appreciative of the award. His winning thesis benefited from a good topic and interesting results, making it a manuscript of outstanding quality. His supervisor, Michal Rouchal, had considered it a clear choice for entry into the competition. As for its subsequent success, he views it as a reflection of the entire supramolecular research team, which is led by Robert Vícha at the Department of Chemistry in the Faculty of Technology.
