About our research
Molecular Chemistry is closely connected to the Institute for Molecules and Materials (IMM), which hosts world-class research groups and a state-of-the-art research facilities. On this page, you can read more about the relevant institute(s), research groups and unique facilities that make our highly renowned research possible.
Research institutes
Institute for Molecules and Materials
IMM is an interdisciplinary research institute in chemistry and physics. The mission of IMM is to perform fundamental research to understand, design, and control the functioning of molecules and materials and to train the next generation of leaders in science and entrepreneurship at the highest international standards.
Research groups
The research groups at IMM cover the full width of molecular chemistry research: you can study chiral crystallization phenomena, molecules that specifically target tumour tissue in the body, molecular probes that enable rapid conjugation to reporter molecules, polymeric nanocapsules that can be used to carry out multiple reactions in a single flask, to mention a few topics.
Below you’ll get an impression of the most relevant departments for your internships. Or click the button below for an overview of IMM research groups and internships related to Molecular Chemistry.
Physical-Organic Chemistry
The Physical-Organic Chemistry department aims to create a synthetic cell. Key questions that need to be addressed are: how do we control the complexity of the multitude of chemical reactions in the cell? What is the crucial difference between living and non-living systems?
Synthetic Organic Chemistry
This group focuses on the development of new and sustainable synthetic (multistep) reactions by using bio-, organo- or metal-catalysts or combinations thereof, synthesis of druglike compound libraries, synthesis of bio-orthogonal click-reactions and chemical synthesis in continuous flow microreactors.
Systems Chemistry
This group focuses on three areas of research: the design of new polymeric materials utilizing controlled polymerisation techniques, the employment of functional responsive polymers to design synthetic motile systems and the translation of motile systems into the clinic. With these systems, this group is tackling one of the most fundamental unresolved challenges in nanomotor research: the application of nanomotors for targeted drug delivery and diagnostics, where nanomotors are able to actively seek and precisely locate tumour tissues by following a concentration gradient provided by the tumour signaling molecules.
Research facilities
The experimental research facilities at IMM are large scale national and sometimes international multi-user centres. Several are combined in the Nijmegen Centre for Advanced Spectroscopy (IMM-NCAS), an International User Facility for fundamental and applied science under the supervision of IMM.
FELIX Laboratory
The FELIX Laboratory (Free-Electron Lasers for Infrared eXperiments) is an international user facility, exploiting several free electron lasers that can be precisely tuned in wavelength, energy and pulse time. The facility provides the world’s most complete coverage of the (far) infrared spectrum and is used in a broad range of fundamental research, from exploring the limits of fibre optics networks to determining the interactions of biological molecules.
Magnetic Resonance Research Center
The focus of the MRRC research center is the development and application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods that enable the study of local structure and dynamics in functional materials. Located in the Goudsmit Pavilion, the laboratory houses eight NMR spectrometers for both liquid- and solid-state NMR research up to 850 MHz.
General Instrumentation Facility
General Instrumentation (GI) is a service department of the Faculty of Science which hosts complex (medium)-large instruments, like devices for element analysis and separation techniques, and light and electron microscopes.