Luminescent materials continue to play a major role in modern society owing to their applications in the state-of-the-art lamps, displays (e.g., TVs, monitors) and medical scanners, and to their potential in the fields of optical devices and biomedicine. The importance of luminescent materials has been recognized globally, designated by the United Nations, 2015 was celebrated as the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies. To further illustrate this, it is estimated that energy-efficient solid-state lighting (e.g., LEDs) could reduce lighting energy use by 75% in 2035. In this CAREER award, jointly supported by the Solid State and Materials Chemistry program in the Division of Materials Research and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), Prof. Bayram Saparov and his group aim to develop a new type of affordable, easy-to-prepare, earth-abundant and robust luminescent materials based on inexpensive metal halides. The project has a potential transformative impact on understanding of the links between the light emission properties and atomic structures of metal halides. This, in turn, will allow us to control and manipulate the materials chemistry of halides to prepare custom design light-emitting materials with full range color-tunability. In addition to brand new avenues for energy-saving solid-state lighting technologies, this project will also provide an excellent platform for promoting materials chemistry research and developing a diverse, competitive Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce in Oklahoma through our Research Experience for High School Students (REHSS) program. The REHSS program will provide a real two-month research experience for Oklahoma high school students; participants include remote rural schools that are primarily serving minority communities.
All-inorganic copper halides have recently been reported as excellent candidates for optical applications owing to their low cost, earth-abundant chemical compositions, solution processability and record high luminescence efficiencies. These copper halides have unique band structures in which copper(I) orbitals dominate the states around the bandgap, which result in poor tunability of their photoluminescence properties. With this CAREER award, jointly supported by the Solid State and Materials Chemistry program in the Division of Materials Research and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), Prof. Bayram Saparov and his group will develop new strategies to control the structures and light emission properties of copper and silver halides through a fundamental understanding of chemical composition-structure-property relationships in the proposed systems. Low-dimensional crystal structures of the proposed halides exhibit narrow discrete energy bands, strong charge localization and high exciton binding energies, characteristics and should enable their performance as highly efficient light emitters. These efforts will provide a core building block of a broader, synergistic research and education program aimed at promoting materials chemistry research and developing a diverse, competitive STEM workforce in Oklahoma.
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.
