Phosphorus-Containing pi-Conjugated Molecular Materials - Design, Synthesis and Their Supramolecular Assembly for Light-Emitting, Light-Harvesting, Electronic Communications and Charge Transport Functions – P-OPTOELECTR-MOLMAT

Functional materials research is one of the top priority strategic areas of development in science and technology in the 21st century. The rational design and synthesis of molecular materials have attracted growing attention in recent years owing to their enormous and unpredictable potentials in molecular devices, especially in the development of molecular optoelectronics and electronics. Research in pi-conjugated organic molecular materials has attracted enormous attention and is currently a rich and proliferating field in molecular materials research. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the incorporation of heteroatoms in pi-conjugated molecular materials, especially those involving nitrogen and sulfur heterocycles. While nitrogen and sulfur heterocycles, such as carbazoles and thiophenes, have been increasingly employed as building blocks in the synthesis of molecular materials for organic optoelectronics and electronics, especially in organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) and organic photovoltaics (OPVs), much less attention has been focused on the corresponding synthetically more challenging but electronically interesting phosphorus-containing heterocyclic counterparts (such as phospholes) and their derivatives. One key property of these phosphorus subunits is the versatile reactivity of the P-centre allowing a structural diversity to be readily generated. In this project, the design, synthesis and supramolecular assembly of phosphorus-containing pi-conjugated molecules and their metal-containing derivatives will be explored. An understanding and control of supramolecular assembly will help to direct and organize the pi-conjugated systems for optoelectronic and electronic functions. These molecular materials will be characterized, and their electronic absorption, photoluminescence and electrochemistry will be studied. These will provide useful information on the excited state energy, tuning of their bandgap energy, and their electronic communication and charge transport properties. Computation studies will be performed to provide insights into their bonding, structure, excited state energy and redox chemistry. The light-harvesting behaviour will also be explored. Efforts will be made to fabricate organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic photovoltaics (OPVs) using selected molecular materials and to study their OLED and OPV properties and performance.