With this award, the Organic and Macromolecular Program supports the work of Professor David I. Schuster, of the Department of Chemistry at New York University. This research will continue the PI's investigations of the dynamics of photoinduced electron transfer reactions in solution in donor-acceptor systems incorporating porphyrin and fullerene moieties, as a function of the topological and spatial relationships of these groups. The goal is to gain understanding of how interchromophoric distance, molecular conformation, topological relationships and environment affect the rates of energy transfer, charge separation and charge recombination processes. The materials to be studied included covalently-linked systems, predominantly those with alkyne linkers which can act as molecular wires, as well as mechanically-linked systems, i.e., rotaxanes and catenanes. Multicomponent systems, in which photoinduced energy and electron transfer processes take place stepwise, as in nature, will be developed as photosynthetic models. Recent advances in synthetic techniques will allow construction of structurally more complex and interesting materials than those previously available for such studies. The detailed mechanisms of the processes occurring upon exposure of these materials to excitation in the solar spectral region will be elaborated by studies in the PI's lab at NYU and in the laboratories of collaborators who are experts in time-resolved spectroscopic and magnetic resonance techniques.
The work will be carried out by students and postdoctoral fellows, who will gain experience in the synthesis, isolation and characterization of novel nanoscale materials. Computational studies, in the PI's lab as well as with theory colleagues on the NYU faculty, will also play a role. An important aspect of this research will be the extensive involvement of undergraduates, beginning in their sophomore or junior years, and in special cases even as freshmen. These students will receive training in cutting-edge research in organic chemistry, from project conception derived from basic principles and the chemical literature, to execution using contemporary synthetic, analytic and spectroscopic methods. All coworkers will receive grounding in photochemical, photophysical and material sciences. This training will be excellent preparation for graduate studies and career development. From a practical point of view, solar cells for energy storage will be developed collaboratively from promising materials discovered in the course of this research.
