Functional Pi-Materials

Functional pi-materials

Building functional nanostructures for clean energy technology through organic chemistry.

Principal Investigator: Catherine Aitchison
The production of clean, renewable energy is crucial in the fight to limit climate change. Technologies to generate and store this energy rely on components with a long list of desirable properties. Developing materials with well-defined nanostructures enables many of these properties to be controlled and enhanced. In the Functional π-Materials Group, we harness the huge flexibility of organic chemistry to synthesize conjugated polymers and molecules that self-assemble into secondary and tertiary structures that are beneficial to performance. We are particularly interested in exploiting π-stacking interactions to form nanostructures with improved electronic or ionic transport. We make and test materials for various solar fuels, photovoltaic, and membrane applications. Like most research at LOE, we aim to take advantage of organic materials’ low cost, high tunability, and high sustainability metrics.
Graphics functional pi-materials

Research

Solar Fuels Photocatalysis

While there has been huge progress in renewable electricity provision in the last two decades, more than half of the world’s energy demands are actually fuel-based rather than electrical. Technology to generate sustainable, non-fossil chemical fuels is urgently required. Solar fuels—those derived from solar energy-driven electrochemical reactions, such as water splitting and CO₂ reduction—are a particular focus for the group. We are at the forefront of research into photocatalytic routes that employ organic semiconductors.



Solar fuels research is sometimes dubbed artificial photosynthesis, and with our organic semiconductors, we do aim to mimic some of the bespoke functionality generated by nature. Organic chemistry allows us to tune material properties like optical gap and porosity to best balance the many factors that influence photocatalytic performance. One feature of organic semiconductors is that charge separation often requires a heterojunction. We are using our supramolecular approach to make new self-assembled materials with donor-acceptor heterojunctions built-in.

 

 

Publications

Latest publications shown, for full list see Instiutional repository

2024

Catherine M. Aitchison, Iain McCulloch (2024) Organic Photovoltaic Materials for Solar Fuel Applications: A Perfect Match? Chemistry of Materials, Vol. 36, p. 1781-1792 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Benjamin J. Willner, Catherine M. Aitchison, Filip Podjaski, Wanpeng Lu, Junfu Tian, James R. Durrant, Iain McCulloch (2024) Correlation between the Molecular Properties of Semiconducting Polymers of Intrinsic Microporosity and Their Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production Journal of the American Chemical Society (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

2023

Catherine M. Aitchison, Soranyel Gonzalez‐Carrero, Shilin Yao, Max Benkert, Zhiyuan Ding, Neil P. Young, Benjamin Willner, Floriana Moruzzi, Yuanbao Lin, Junfu Tian, Peter D. Nellist, James R. Durrant, Iain McCulloch (2023) Templated 2D Polymer Heterojunctions for Improved Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production Advanced Materials, Vol. 36 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Floriana Moruzzi, Weimin Zhang, Balaji Purushothaman, Soranyel Gonzalez-Carrero, Catherine M. Aitchison, Benjamin Willner, Fabien Ceugniet, Yuanbao Lin, Jan Kosco, Hu Chen, Junfu Tian, Maryam Alsufyani, Joshua S. Gibson, Ed Rattner, Yasmine Baghdadi, Salvador Eslava, Marios Neophytou, James R. Durrant, Ludmilla Steier, Iain McCulloch (2023) Solution-processable polymers of intrinsic microporosity for gas-phase carbon dioxide photoreduction Nature Communications, Vol. 14, Article 3443 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Josua Wachsmuth, Andreas Distler, Chao Liu, Thomas Heumüller, Yang Liu, Catherine M. Aitchison, Alina Hauser, Michael Rossier, Amélie Robitaille, Marc-Antoine Llobel, Pierre-Olivier Morin, Anaïs Thepaut, Charline Arrive, Iain McCulloch, Yinhua Zhou, Christoph J. Brabec, Hans-Joachim Egelhaaf (2023) Fully Printed and Industrially Scalable Semitransparent Organic Photovoltaic Modules: Navigating through Material and Processing Constraints Solar RRL, Vol. 7 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

People

The Lab

The Chemistry lab

The Functional π-Materials group is located in the Chemistry lab  at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics in Norrköping. Here we are currently building a state-of-the-art lab for conjugated polymer and molecule synthesis, self-assembly and nanoprocessing techniques as well as our own photocatalysis testing set-up. In addition, we have access to great research infrastructure through shared facilities at LOE . We collaborate extensively within the Laboratory of Organic Electronics and with groups from other institutions. Want to collaborate? Contact Cath directly: catherine.aitchison@liu.se
To LOE Chemistry lab
To shared facilities at LOE


The WISE programme

Our lab is part of the WISE programme (The Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability) funded by  Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. WISE, funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, is the largest-ever investment in materials science in Sweden. WISE gives us access to a whole network of materials scientists and research infrastructure such as the redox.me testbed for industry scale electrochemical testing. 
To the WISE programme
To the redox.me test bed


National infrastructure

We also take advantage of national infrastructure in Sweden such as myfab, Chalmers Materials Analysis Laboratory and MAXIV. 
To myfab,
To Chalmers Materials Analysis Laboratory
To MAX IV.

Join Us!

Open Positions

We are hiring! We currently have open calls for 1 PhD and 1 postdoc with more to come.
Links to current adverts:
https://liu.se/en/work-at-liu/vacancies/25552
https://liu.se/en/work-at-liu/vacancies/25553


Postdoctoral scholars

We always look for talented postdocs. If you are passionate about developing new organic semiconductors, self-assembly, photocatalysis, or related fields, please email Cath at catherine.aitchison@liu.se. Please include your CV, and a short description of your scientific interests. Your interests do not have to completely match what we already do in the group! With strong candidates, we are happy to write joint proposals for postdoctoral programs such as the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions.


PhD students

We hire PhD students through open calls, placed at The Linköping University job-pages. To the Linköping University job-pages


MSc students and undergraduate students

If you want to find a lab for your MSc thesis, or for your ERASMUS project work, we want to hear about your interests! We frequently offer suitable projects for undergraduates. Please email Cath at catherine.aitchison@liu.se. Please include a copy of your CV, and a short description of your scientific interests.