CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory
Welcome to SaBa Lab
2D-Polymers for Energy & Catalytic Applications
The surge in global energy demand and depleting non-renewable fossil fuel resources impart a severe energy crisis. The increase of CO2 level results in global warming, and associated climate changes challenge life's existence on earth. In this context, significant efforts in identifying alternate energy sources such as proton-exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), energy production using hydrogen and CO2 conversion to fuel and chemicals, are receiving extensive attention. However, the vital challenge here is the rational design of new functional materials capable of delivering elusive goals. Organic 2D-polymers (2DPs) are emerging materials that find promising applications for sustainable energy production. In recent years, many aesthetic molecular designs have been exploited to develop 2DPs equipped with defined repeating units and built-in porosity. The synthetic versatility available with these 2DPs generates a variety of functional materials with tailored properties provide broad-spectrum of applications in the renewable energy and luminescent application. The research in the area offers unique opportunity to work in the broad area 2DPs development and applications.
Luminescent Organic Materials
The realization of technologically high potential molecular materials as an innovative replacement for the currently used ones requires sensible molecular design and implementation. One such well-known class is “luminescent organic materials” and new diverse concepts have been adding to this field. Crystal-based materials are gaining increased attention in the field of luminescent materials because they exhibit excellent performance in the crystalline assembly along with processability, low cost, and thermal stability. The interest in organic luminescent materials with thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF), room temperature phosphorescence (RTP), and long persistent luminescence (LPL) materials is tremendously increased during the past decade due to its attractive luminescent features. The currently employed TADF molecules are able to achieve 100 % external quantum efficiency (EQE) in OLEDs. Similarly, new crystalline RTP materials exhibit a longer lifetime up to several seconds under ambient conditions. Both TADF and RTP materials exhibit better performance in the crystalline assembly due to many supportive features. However, there have been many limitations for the existing crystalline luminescent materials such as solubility, processability, scalability by vapour deposition technique etc. In this context, our group interest is turned towards diverse luminescent materials comprised of crystalline assemblies, amorphous polymer-based materials, and solvent-free organic liquids with enhanced luminescent features. Here our goal is to develop new “luminescent organic materials” which are easy to synthesize, scalable, and possess stability, processability, and self-repair features.
Solvent-free Organic Liquids
Solvent-free organic liquids are a new class of functional soft materials. Here the available fluid matrix makes it equally competitive with the solvent assisted systems. Organic liquids challenge the established and accepted paradigms of solvated systems with its unique features. In general, fundamental properties such as photoisomerization, energy/electron transfer, photon upconversion, and reversible dioxygen binding are controlled by solvents and/or solvent polarity, the presence of oxygen etc. Solvent-free Organic liquids challenge such existing concepts by realizing it under neat, solvent-free, and ambient conditions. This new phase of research has created many potential functional materials, which work more efficiently compared to the solvent assisted systems. Recent research shows that these new processable soft materials can be a replacement for solid luminescent materials as well. We have explored the solvent-free liquid matrix to dope with other functional molecules to study the intermolecular interaction in the absence of any solvent (solvent-free) and at the same time to develop new hybrid materials.
