Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

This proposal describes ways to prepare and study how taking dye molecules, or 'chromophores' that are ordinarily flat, and bending them into curved structures. This is interesting because we think it should offer a different way to tune the properties of these molecules, which then in the long term may help materials scientists use them for commercial applications. As is often the case in research in the physical sciences, we gained our initial source of inspiration from nature. Impressive examples of how nature bends chromophores can be found in photosynthesis, wherein several of the molecules that mediate the transfer of the light energy are bent. It is believed the curvature helps to tune the properties of the molecules to make the process more efficient. Chemists have made bent molecules before as well, though making them can be challenging because the molecules would rather be planar. Nevertheless, in the few cases where chemists have made bent molecules that allow a fair comparison with their planar cousins, they have found that new and interesting properties emerge; including how they absorb and give off (fluoresce) light, and how they behave in an electric field (to name a few). As our subjects of study, we have chosen to explore ways to prepare curved derivatives two important chromophores, porphyrins and pentacenes. We intend to distort the porphyrins into a bowl-shape, the only type of deformation that neither nature nor chemists have explored. We also make bent, 'banana' shaped versions of the board-shaped pentacene molecules. We chose these two classes because they are emerging as very important materials for a use in electronics that use organic materials instead of metals, as well as photovoltaic devices. It is anticipated that so-called 'organic electronics' may prove to be an extremely important technology in constructing future electronic devices in the future, including computers and inexpensive solar cells.