Narrow Bandgap Conjugated Polymers with Strong Correlations and Open-Shell Electronic Structures: Towards New Phenomena and Emergent Optoelectronic Technologies
When
Narrow Bandgap Conjugated Polymers with Strong Correlations and Open-Shell Electronic Structures:
Towards New Phenomena and Emergent Optoelectronic Technologies
Monday, April 14, 2025 at 12:00 PM (Eastern Time)
Chemistry and Biochemistry, Materials Science and Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Abstract. For over forty years, conjugated polymers (CPs) have been a source of enormous fundamental breakthroughs, enabling foundational insight into the nature of π-bonding and electron pairing, the creation of novel optoelectronic functionalities, and the development of numerous transformative technologies. Despite revolutionizing the functional electronic materials landscape, the complex structural and energetic heterogeneities that define these materials limit the development of critical emerging technologies by complicating molecular design and engineering approaches for bandgap control at low energies, tailored interactions with long-wavelength electromagnetic radiation, and the exploitation of spin, magnetic, and quantum properties. To address these modern challenges, we developed precision synthetic methods that provide control of the many chemical, electronic, and structural features that affect electronic coherence within π-conjugated materials, enabling unprecedented levels of bandgap and electronic structure control. The utility of these materials for understanding emergent light-matter interactions has enabled optical to electrical transduction of infrared (IR) light, a new capability for organic materials. This has enabled our development of high-performance, low SWaP-C, and even radiation-hardened IR optoelectronics that overcome critical manufacturing, cost, supply chain, and operational limitations associated with current semiconductor technologies. We subsequently discovered that narrow bandgaps and strong electronic correlations offer a fundamentally new and broadly applicable approach to control spin, magnetic, and quantum properties within conjugated organic materials. Through articulating new mechanisms of spin alignment, topology control, and exchange, we enabled the synthesis of molecules and macromolecules with varying degrees of intramolecular spin-pairing (i.e., diradical character), the first examples of robust, high-spin CPs, and tunable quantum materials. These transformational design paradigms critically overcome the synthetic inaccessibility, lack of tunability, and intrinsic instability of open-shell electronic configurations in light-element materials. Stronger electronic correlations than previous generations of organic paramagnetic materials impart robust stability suitable for practical applications and enable novel optical, photonic, transport, thermal, spin, magnetic, and quantum properties not previously measured in soft-matter systems. These novel attributes are enabling the design of new optoelectronic and device functionalities that cannot be realized with current semiconductor technologies and provide a remarkable platform to study new phenomena at the interface of various fields such as chemistry, condensed matter physics, materials science, engineering, spintronics, and quantum matter.
Dr. Jason Azoulay is an Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Materials Science and Engineering. He is the Georgia Research Alliance Vasser-Woolley Distinguished Investigator in Optoelectronics and co-director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics. Prior to joining GT, he was an Associate Professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at The University of Southern Mississippi. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California Santa Barbara and performed post-doctoral studies at Sandia National Laboratories.
Prof. Azoulay’s research group unites strong synthetic foundations with physics, materials science, and engineering to synthesize and apply next-generation functional materials. Research efforts within the group encompass homogeneous catalysis applied to polymer synthesis; electronic, photonic, magnetic, and quantum materials; device fabrication and engineering; chemical sensing in complex aqueous environments for environmental monitoring; and the synthesis, application, and engineering of high-performance polymers across multiple technology platforms.
Azoulay has directed large interdisciplinary and center-level efforts in conjugated polymers, optoelectronics, and chemical sensing. He has also received numerous awards and honors, including the 2017 Nokia-Bell Labs Prize and Department of Energy Early Career Research Program Award.
This presentation will be via Zoom. If you require the link, please contact Jen Garcia at jennyj@arizona.edu