Sheffield Univ. leading £7.25 m project to create new sustainable carbon-based materials

11 / 07 / 2020

By Marwa Nassar - -

The University of Sheffield is leading a £7.25 million project to create new sustainable carbon-based materials that could improve light technologies including solar energy capture and medical sensors.

The project can help the UK government meet its target of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The funding, awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, will help researchers develop ‘Molecular Photonic Breadboards’, organic molecular materials that it is hoped will enable highly efficient capture and transport of light energy.

There has long been interest in using carbon molecular materials in these optoelectronic devices because they can be produced in low-energy processes from abundant, inexpensive materials. However, a fundamental barrier has been poor control over the transport of light energy in these materials.

Solar cells are powered by silicon semiconductors absorbing sunlight and converting that sunlight into electricity. For organic materials to match the efficiency of silicon, scientists need to control the behavior of excitons, formed when light is absorbed by molecules, much more effectively.

The Sheffield University project aims to solve this problem. If successful the project will drive down the cost and improve the performance of organic materials and transforming approaches to solar energy production and consumer electronics.

Professor Graham Leggett, Head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Sheffield and project lead, said: “Control of excitons is essential for many new and emerging technologies identified in the government’s Industrial Strategy as being vital to the economic success of the UK, including solar energy capture, photocatalysis, quantum technologies, and the design of diagnostic devices for personalized medicine.”

“An unsolved grand challenge has been to develop design rules for the long-range transport of excitons. Our goal is to solve this grand challenge.”