Organic chemistry is the study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials. Organic compounds form the basis of all earthly life, and they are used in a range of products such as fuels, plastics, pharmaceuticals, food, explosive materials, and paints. Essentially, modern society would not be what it is without organic molecules.

Research

Based on organic synthetic chemistry the research is focused on reaction design and methodology development in the fields of medicinal technology, molecular nanotechnology and energy related sciences.

Thus, organic chemistry is used to prepare new advanced chemical, reagents, and catalysts, and develop new drug candidates, drug delivery concepts and nano-molecular devices. Also, biologically active compounds found in nature, are isolated and characterised. The application of advanced NMR and other spectroscopic and chromatographic techniques are an important component of all these research efforts. Key organic chemistry subtopics includes: catalysis; organometallic chemistry; chemistry of polyenes; chemo- regio- and enantioselective synthesis; heterocyclic chemistry; fluoro-containing compounds; NMR.

Research Groups

Advanced Optoelectronic Nanomaterials (Solon Oikonomopoulos)

Organic Energy Materials (Audun Formo Buene)

Applied Organic Chemistry (Bård Helge Hoff)

Biocatalysis in Organic Chemistry (Elisabeth Egholm Jacobsen)

Organic Analysis and Synthesis of Sugars (Nebojša Simić)

Synthetic Organic Chemistry (Odd Reidar Gautun)

Research projects

• Synthesis and characterisation of dyes for dye-sensitised solar cells
• Development of new cancer treatment agents by kinase inhibition
• Synthesis of anti-bacterial agents based on marine natural products
• New anti-inflammatory compounds from plant
• Enzyme catalysed chemo-, regio- and enantioselective synthesis.
• Development of fluorine-free polyethylene surface modification for skiing applications.