Bringing inorganic chemistry to life

Abstract

In recent years, the development of advanced materials has been stimulated by the combinatorial strategies that Nature employs to construct assemblies of complex molecules with a specific form and function. Professor Achim Müller of the University of Bielefeld, Germany has extended this approach into the realm of inorganic chemistry in an extraordinarily imaginative way. He has been exploring the intricate and versatile chemical behaviour of molybdenum and its oxides, creating self-assembling systems of molybdates in solution that can be regarded as inorganic ‘nanomodels’ for biological activity at the cellular level.