EDUCATIONAL WEBINAR:
WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 2021 @ 2:00PM EDT
Photon Upconversion – Getting Molecules and Nanocrystals to Talk Triplets
by Dr. Ming Lee Tang, Associate Professor at the University of Utah
Abstract:
In order to harness the intrinsic ability of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals to couple strongly with light, it is important to efficiently outcouple energy from photoexcited quantum dots (QDs), much like how nature uses molecular antennas to direct light during photosynthesis. This talk focuses on aromatic acceptor ligands for triplet-fusion based photon upconversion, where orbital overlap between the QD donor and molecular acceptor is critical for efficient energy transduction. In the past 5 years, we have learnt a great deal about how the electronic interactions between chalcogenide nanocrystals and acene conjugated molecules affect the photon upconversion quantum yield. We apply the lessons learnt to extending photon upconversion to silicon nanocrystal light absorbers, addressing synthetic and self-assembly challenges with invaluable insight from time-resolved spectroscopy, especially transient absorption spectroscopy.
Dr. Ming Lee Tang is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Utah. She obtained her B.S. from Brandeis University in 2004 and Ph.D. from Stanford University working with Zhenan Bao. Before launching launched her independent career at the University of California, Riverside in 2012, she did a postdoctoral stint at the University of California, Berkeley with Jeff Long and Paul Alivisatos, where she began fostering electronic communication between molecules and nanoparticles, a pet penchant.
