Self-assembly of Supramolecular Fullerenes
Project Leaders: J. Noveron, C.J.Hawker
Collaborators: L. Echegoyen, M. Irwin, J. Read de Alaniz, R. Seshadri, F. Wudl
Research Goals:
The focus of our research efforts is the development of strategies to make supramolecular fullerene nanostructures and establish structure-function relationships of heterojuctions in organic solar cells. The supramolecular organization of fullerenes has the potential to impact their physical properties such as electrochemical capacitance, photoluminescence, superconductivity, and charge transfer potential; thus, we explore the use of molecular self-assembly to discover functional nanostructures that support and promote directional photoelectron transfer and pave the way to a new generation of photovoltaic materials. One strategy we employ is the crystal engineering of fullerenes. Using pre-configured components that generate pores and have a binding affinity to fullerenes, we attempt to generate supramolecular crystal lattices of fullerenes that allow us to replace the solvent trapped in the crystal with photoactive semiconductors and study supramolecular structure-function relationships with respect to photovoltaics