Advanced Functional Organic Materials throughout the Undergraduate Curriculums

Seth Marder (Georgia Institute of Technology),   Jean-Luc Brédas (Georgia Institute of Technology),   Joe Perry (Georgia Institute of Technology)  

Advanced functional organic materials impact various aspects of our daily lives.  For example, they are used in the fabrication of computer chips, liquid crystal displays, anti-static coatings and more recently in organic light emitting diode based displays.  In coming years we will see new organic circuitry based on organic semiconducting materials, and they may play important roles in the generation of power from sunlight.  The design of materials used for each of these applications requires a detailed understanding of the relationship between chemical structure and material functionality.  In this workshop, we will discuss the fundamental chemical concepts relating to light absorption, emission, conjugation, self-assembly, photochemistry, and how they impact the design of liquid crystals for displays, photochromic dyes for sunglasses, polymers micro-lithography as well as for other applications.  We anticipate that participants in this course will have a more in depth understanding of how to incorporate materials concepts into the undergraduate curriculum using real-world examples.  Workshop participants will have the opportunity to work in the laboratory with dyes, liquid crystals and photochemically sensitive polymers, examining their optical/electronic properties and performing quantum chemical calculations to predict optical and electronic properties of simple conjugated molecules.