New Optoelectronic Materials Based on Corannulene Derivatives (follow up)

In this project, I strive at creating functional polymers and soft materials based on the corannulene chemistry. The motivation is that these materials will be useful in a plethora of applications ranging from plastic solar cells to light emitting diodes and sensors. The grand challenge of this project is the development of new synthetic routes to corannulene rich macromolecules. To meet this challenge, I had proposed several different approaches. In the last 2.5 years of the funding period, I succeeded in evaluating my proposed strategies and identifying the successful approaches. In this way, I have created a variety of corannulene-rich macromolecular architectures differing in the shape and the chemical composition. Now that I have established the synthetic routes, I would like to move further to study the properties of the synthesized materials in great depth. Initial results indicate that some of the synthesized polymers are good at hosting the technologically important Fullerene C60 molecules. This indicates a promising direction towards preparation of novel n-type materials via supramolecular synthesis for the potential use in the photovoltaic devices. I would like to continue the synthesis aspect as well with the focus on designing even more complex polymeric systems (for example, donor(thiophene)/acceptor(corannulene) type alternating and block copolymers). I would also like to study the optoelectronic properties of my materials in real life devices. Hence, to bring these ideas to a full body of work that can be presented as a habilitation thesis to the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Zürich, I would like to request to SNSF, who has made my endeavor possible in the first place, for two years of extension to the existing grant.