Associate Professor Prashant Sonar Wins Funding Grant with Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

Associate Professor Prashant Sonar has received a funding grant (90, 000 AUD) with Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur on “Inorganic-Organic Hybrid Flexible Solar Cells for Large Area Applications” under the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC).
Out of 282 proposals, 42 were shortlisted from Australian Universities (almost 14%), further strengthening research collaboration between India and Australia.
The list can be found here:
https://sparc.iitkgp.ac.in/apProposal_list.php


AUCAOS members awarded research funding by Australian Research Council (Discovery Projects 2019 round 1)

Congratulations to the following AUCAOS members who have recently been awarded Discovery Project funding by the Australian Research Council: Prof Ron White, Assoc Prof Chris McNeill, Dr David Huang, Prof Gunther Andersson, Dr Nadim Darwish, Prof Keith Gordon, Prof Paul Low, Dr Atilla Mozer, Prof Tim Schmidt, Dr Andrew Nattestad.

Please see below for further details (AUCAOS members in bold):

Investigator(s) Summary
Associate Professor Attila Mozer; Dr Pawel Wagner; Dr Andrew Nattestad; Associate Professor Shogo Mori; Professor Keith Gordon Faster interfacial electron transfer: the effect of molecule shape and size. This project aims to explore the effect of shape and size of pi-conjugated molecules on interfacial electron transfer reactions, which are fundamentally important in all applications of photo-electrochemical conversion and storage of energy. By making two series of pi-conjugated molecules and determining electron transfer rates using a combination of transient spectroscopies and computational chemistry, the project expects to generate new design principles for molecules with the potential to significantly improve the efficiencies of solar energy conversion and photo-catalytic processes. The new materials and findings will be exploited in a novel redox-mediated water splitting device as a practical outcome with potential end user benefits.
Associate Professor Christopher McNeill; Associate Professor David Huang; Professor Martin Heeney; Professor Michael Sommer Aggregation control for high-performance polymer electronics. This project aims to exploit the behaviour of semiconducting polymer chains in solution to realise high-performance polymer electronics. This project will be achieved through a combination of simulation, theory, and X-ray measurements of solution-phase chain conformation and device studies. The project expects to create new predictive understanding of how the self organisation of semiconducting polymer chains determines thin-film microstructure and thus charge transport in thin-film devices. Expected outcomes include new materials and processes for high-performance polymer transistors and enhanced interdisciplinary research partnerships. This approach should hasten the development of new technologies based on lightweight flexible electronic devices.
Associate Professor James Sullivan; Professor Ronald White; Professor Michael Brunger; Dr Daniel Cocks; Dr Joshua Machacek; Professor Gustavo Garcia; Dr Jimena Gorfinkiel Positrons in biosystems. This project aims to improve our understanding of the damage processes in Positron Emission Tomography (PET). PET is a widely used medical imaging technique, but there are gaps in our understanding of the underlying interactions, in particular in the case of the radiation damage induced during the process. By using new models incorporating accurate descriptions of interactions processes, verified by experimental measurement, this project will develop a new model of positron transport in PET. The project will allow validation of predictions from the model by undertaking experiments in liquid water.
Professor Erica Wanless; Professor Vincent Craig; Professor Gunther Andersson; Associate Professor Grant Webber; Dr Alister Page Unravelling the dominant drivers of ion specificity. This project aims to understand what governs the sensitivity of many technological and biological processes to the precise nature of the salt present in solution. The term ‘ion-specific’ encompasses all the circumstances in which the influence of a salt in solution depends on the precise chemical nature of the salt, not just the electrical charge on the ions that form the salt. As such, ion-specific effects abound and have important consequences in most situations involving solutions, including cellular functions and battery technology. This project will enable us to understand and control the influence of specific ions, building on our recently described fundamental ion-specific series with colloid science experiments and quantum simulations. This project should overcome current challenges in predicting ion-specific effects leading to progress in a wide variety of applications of colloid and interface science, from sensor interfaces to self-assembly.
Dr Simone Ciampi; Dr Nadim Darwish Electrostatic catalysis from single-molecule events to macroscopic systems. Electrostatics has important applications in day-to-day technologies, from recycling plastics to photocopying, but the exploration of how static charges affect chemical bonds and bonding is still in its infancy. This project aims to demonstrate the experimental links between the magnitude and polarity of an external electric field and chemical rates, expanding our understanding of chemical reactivity and transforming our view of catalysis. By investigating the role of static electricity over systems selected from different sub-disciplines of chemistry, the project will derive the ground and selection rules for reactivity and selectivity by electrostatics. The project is expected to show that for chemical reactions of practical and conceptual value a specific catalyst can be replaced by a generic electric field stimulus, an invisible catalyst, enabling cleaner and cheaper opportunities that current technologies cannot fulfil.
Professor Paul Low; Professor Richard Nichols; Professor Colin Lambert Molecular transistors: from strings and rings to other things. This project aims to use chemical approaches to develop molecular transistors, which are critical components for a future molecular electronics technology. The use of molecules as ultra-miniaturised electronic components is gathering attention from industry and academia, as a solution to the approaching limits of top-down scaling. However, current molecular designs based on gating through chemical reaction or redox state changes are slow and inefficient. The project will develop molecular transistors with exceptionally high gain and fast response based on gating the energy of quantum interference features in molecules with cross-conjugated or ring-like shapes. This will provide significant benefits including new strategies for nanofabrication of molecular devices.
Professor Paul Low; Professor Richard Nichols; Professor Colin Lambert; Professor Dr Martin Kaupp; Dr Thomas Becker A radical approach to the design of components for molecular electronics. This project aims to develop highly conductive organometallic molecular wires for use in future molecular electronics technology. Metal complexes have immense potential as components in future electronic circuits, offering function on a size impossible to meet in conventional solid-state devices, and helping overcome limits in ‘top-down’ scaling. Whilst organic molecules that display electronic function are known, their performance remains poor. Just as doping a semiconductor results in higher electrical conductance by placing additional electrons (holes) into the conduction (valence) band, this project will use transition metal organometallic complexes bearing radical ligands as innovative motifs in the design of novel molecular components.
Professor Timothy Schmidt; Professor Scott Kable; Associate Professor Jan Cami; Professor John Anthony; Professor John Stanton Resolving the interstellar carbon crisis with multilaser spectroscopy. This project aims to provide astronomers of the future with firm diagnostic tools to identify and understand exotic carbon species in the interstellar medium. Life on Earth began after delivery of carbon-based pre-biotic material to the young planet by comets and meteorites. This material came from outside the solar system, but we do not yet know the chemical make-up of the interstellar matter. This is because we do not understand precisely how the interstellar molecules and dust interact with starlight. This project will create and study models of interstellar matter in the laboratory, and will determine the chemical form of carbon in the interstellar medium. This will have lasting impact on astrophysical models, as well as theories of the origin of life.

Merck Travel Grant Competition Results

Congratulations to the following young scientists:

Winner:
Inseong Cho

Runners Up:
Ashish Sharma
Yanting Yin
Guanran Zhang

The Winner will receive funding for the cost of registration, accommodation, and flights to the AUCAOS symposium. Three runners-up will be offered access to Global technical support for their proposed research submitted in the competition, and win a cash prize.

A New Member in Diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) Family- Naphthalene Flanked DPP for Organic Electronics Reported by QUT Researchers

DPP is a well-known and recently widely studied promising conjugated building block for designing new high performance donor–acceptor-based functional organic semiconductors for both organic field effect transistor (OFET) and organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices. Flanking groups such as phenylene, thiophen, furan, pyridine, thiazole substituted DPP’s have been reported earlier with impressive performance in both OFET and OPV devices. A new addition of naphthalene flanked DPP organic semiconductor synthesis in the series has been reported by A/Prof Prashant Sonar and his team from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in the current work. Due to the structural novelty and its promising performance in solution processable OFET devices, it has been featured on the cover page of New Journal of Chemistry.

Here is the link for further details- http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2018/nj/c8nj01453a


New Low Cost Hole Transporting Material for Stable Perovskite Solar Cells

In this paper, highly efficient and humidity‐resistant perovskite solar cells (PSCs) using two new small molecule hole transporting materials (HTM) made from a cost‐effective precursor anthanthrone (ANT) dye are reported by Associate Prof. Sonar from QUT and his co-workers. This breakthrough paves the way for development of new inexpensive, more stable, and highly efficient ANT core based lower cost HTMs for cost‐effective, conventional, and printable PSCs.

This is reported by Hong Duc Pham, Thu Trang Do, Jinhyun Kim, Cecile Charbonneau, Sergei Manzhos, Krishna Feron, Wing Chung Tsoi, James R. Durrant, Sagar M. Jain, and Prashant Sonar in the article https://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.201703007.

The research conducted between QUT and Swansea University has been highlighted as a video abstract in Advanced Energy Materials (IF- 16.72) and this can be seen on the following portal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgLkeFves7o&feature=youtu.be


Powerful combination of deuteration and neutron scattering used to characterise structure of molecules on surface of nanoparticles

Chemical deuteration at ANSTO’s National Deuteration Facility (NDF) was combined with small angle neutron scattering (SANS) and molecular simulations for the first time to create three dimensional models of ligand shells of nanoparticles including gold, silver and copper. The research lead by scientists from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in collaboration with the National Deuteration Facility of ANSTO, the University of Trieste, , Paul Scherer Institute, Jülich Centre for Neutron Science, Adolphe Merkle Institute, and European Molecular Biology Laboratory has been published this week in Nature Communications. Dr Tamim Darwish (NDF), a member of AUCAOS, who leads the deuteration work in this study, was among the authors of the paper. More details can be found on the link below.

http://www.ansto.gov.au/AboutANSTO/MediaCentre/News/ACS178694


Counter Improvised Threats Grand Challenge

Dr Paul Shaw and Professor Paul Burn of the Centre for Organic Photonics & Electronics – The University of Queensland, in collaboration with the Defence Science Technology Group, have been awarded funding to develop technology to counter the ever-growing incidence of improvised threats. Over 200 proposals were submitted to the Grand Challenge, with 13 funded to support collaborative research programs across 26 different organisations. The program awarded to the COPE team builds on the intellectual property and knowhow that has gone into the development of Arbsense, which is currently being commercialised by Arborescent 2 Ltd (http://arborescent.com)

Further information:
https://www.pyneonline.com.au/media-centre/media-releases/19-million-to-counter-improvised-threats


Professor Paul Burn Wins Global Award

Professor Paul Burn, ARC Laureate Fellow and Head of the Centre for Organic Photonics & Electronics, School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences at The University of Queensland has been awarded a prestigious Helmholtz International Fellowship.
The Helmholtz International Fellowships are awarded to scientists “who have excelled in extraordinary ways in research fields that are central to the work of the Helmholtz Association”. They aim to build research collaboration and the Fellows “also act as ambassadors between the institutions and the Helmholtz Association”.
The Fellowship provides support for the collaboration between Professor Burn and Dr Alexander Colsmann at the Light Technology Institute, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

For further information see:
https://idw-online.de/en/news686675
http://www.science.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=250901


AUCAOS Expands

The AUCAOS committee is delighted to announce the community’s name change to the Australasian Community for Advanced Organic Semiconductors, with the aim to include colleagues from neighbouring countries from the region. The community also has a new logo to reflect the expansion, which can be up-dated as new members join.