CAREER: Baird's Polycyclic Anti-Aromatic Chromophores & Application to Engineer Crystalline Dyads for Photon Upconversion in the Solid State

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In this CAREER project, funded by the Chemical Structure, Dynamic & Mechanism B Program of the Chemistry Division, Professor Anoklase Ayitou of the Department of Chemistry at Illinois Institute of Technology is developing novel aromatic chromophores and their dyad derivatives for photon upconversion. Photon upconversion is a solar energy management process that can help maximize the efficiency of current photovoltaic devices or solar cells. The ultimate goal of this research is to exploit the photophysical properties of organic light harvesting systems to devise next generation organic photonic materials. These materials can be further derivatized to engineer not only high-efficiency photovoltaic devices but also materials for biological imaging. Professor Ayitou and his team use the tools of synthetic organic chemistry, computational modeling, advanced spectroscopy and crystallography in this project, which presents a mosaic of scientific techniques, educational and outreach activities that benefit the scientific community and students of all levels. To this end, Professor Ayitou mentors and provides training for students who participate in this research. Additionally, the educational component of the project includes outreach activities that promote STEM education at Illinois Institute of Technology and in the South Side Communities of Chicago. Baird's antiaromaticity is a characteristic of chromophores that showcase 4n-pi electrons in the ground state and (4n+2)-pi "aromatic species" upon photoexcitation. This project aims to understand how tuning the intrinsic (4n+2)-pi aromaticity of polycyclic diimides can generate novel polycyclic chromophores that exhibit Baird's antiaromaticity. Another aspect of this project is the synthesis of polycyclic antiaromatic chromophores (PAC) based organic dyads, which can be used to explore energy/photon upconversion phenomenon. Overall, the results from this project help unravel the following questions: (1) can the proposed PAC be more/less antiaromatic with respect to the degree of pi-extension of their molecular core? (2) would aromatic extension of PAC help modulate their photophysical properties? (3) can the PAC-dyads exhibit superior photophysical properties in comparison with native PAC in photon upconversion? and (4) can materials from these dyads be used as ingredients for photovoltaic and optical devices fabrication and for biological imaging?This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.