PhD student position within the Laboratory for Computational Modeling of Functional Materials at the Namur Institute of Structured Matter of the University of Namur and Laboratory for Chemistry of Novel Materials at the University of Mons.
The research project that the candidate is going to pursue will take place within a “Projet de Recherche (PDR)” (1) from the FRS-FNRS. This is a collaborative project together with two experimental groups based in the United Kingdom, namely, the group of Profs. Friend, Rao and Bronstein from the University of Cambridge and the group of Dr. Emrys Evans at the University of Swansea. The project itself will deal with the characterization of radical molecules exhibiting a high emission quantum yield for applications in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) devices and/or quantum information sciences (QIS). The project will rely on the findings made in a recently published article [1]. Essentially, we will seek for materials sustaining (i) positive (ferromagnetic) exchange interactions between spin centers in order to stabilize and to manipulate- high-spin excited states at room temperature; (ii) low-lying electronic excitations with prominent radiative decay rates and small non-radiative decay rates for efficient light emission; and (iii) resonant energy level alignment between the radical emissive electronic states and the chromophore high-spin excited states for efficient interstate conversion using a combination of computational methods. We will establish a feedback loop with the experimental partners at the University of Cambridge and University of Swansea to fine tune the design strategies of such optically active compounds.
Funder : Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles
References
[1] S. Gorgon, K. Lv, J. Grüne, B.H. Drummond, W.K. Myers, G. Londi, G. Ricci, D. Valverde, C. Tonnelé, P. Murto, A.S. Romanov, D. Casanova, V. Dyakonov, A. Sperlich, D. Beljonne, Y. Olivier, F. Li, R.H. Friend, E.W. Evans, Nature (2023) accepted.
[2] X. Ai, E. W. Evans, S. Dong, A. J. Gillett, H. Guo, Y. Chen, T.J.H. Hele, R.H. Friend, F. Li, Nature 563, 536 (2018).
[3] A.J. Gillett, A. Pershin, R. Pandya, S. Feldmann, A.J. Sneyd, A.M. Alvertis, E.W. Evans, T.H. Thomas, L.S. Cui, B.H. Drummond, G.D. Scholes, Y. Olivier, A. Rao, R. Friend, and D. Beljonne, Nat. Mater. 21 (2022) 1150.
[4] M. Franz, F. Neese and S. Richert, Chem. Sci. 13, 12358 (2022).
[5] M.R. Wasielewski, M.D.E. Forbes, N.L. Frank, K. Kowalski, G.D. Scholes, J. Yuen-Zhou, M.A. Baldo, D.E. Freedman, R.H. Goldsmith, T. Goodson III, M.L. Kirk, J.K. McCusker, J.P. Ogilvie, D.A. Shultz, S. Stoll and K. B. Whaley, Nat. Rev. Chem. 4, 90 (2020).