Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Climate change is a rapidly growing concern due to its societal, economic, and national security impact. Recent years have thus seen accelerated international adoption of renewable energy sources with reduced carbon emissions, and Canada’s Climate Action plan targeting the reduction of net CO2 emissions to zero by 2050. Consequently, there is an immediate need for the development of disruptive sustainable technologies and materials. Dr. Baumgartner’s research program supports these efforts via a tailor-made, functional materials-focused strategy, addressing the efficient and sustainable use, conversion, and/or storage of energy via bottom-up chemical synthesis. The overarching theme of the proposed research program is the design and development of novel, next-generation sustainable organophosphorus materials, an area in which Dr. Baumgartner has been a global pioneer for many years. A particular focus of the proposed research program will be on materials that are cost-effective, provide access to new versatile functional building blocks, have improved energy-storage capabilities, and/or show improved supramolecular organization in the solid state for enhanced performance. This proposal is designed to generate radically new scientific knowledge on intriguing optoelectronic organic materials, which are currently mainly known for the global organic light-emitting device (OLED) display industry. They allow for lightweight, flexible, low-cost electronics and generally only consume a small amount of energy. Beyond OLEDs, organic conjugated materials bear huge potential as molecular sensors for environmental sensing, cost effective and energy-efficient lighting sources, or electrochemical energy storage (i.e., batteries). The latter is particularly desirable for our increasingly electrified society and an intriguing means for storing the intermittent solar and wind energy. With a growing new technology also comes a rapidly expanding economy sector; Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates 7 trillion dollars in capital investments in sustainable energy technologies over the next 20 years. The proposed research is thus of great strategic value for Canada and its industrial landscape to be poised for rapid growth in the clean energy sector and it aligns with Canada’s goals of Clean Energy and Clean Growth, as defined in the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy (FSDS).