Research Projects

Supramolecular living polymerization offers a significant pathway to control the size and shape of nanostructures through precise kinetic regulation and molecular design. In comparison to the traditional polymerization relying on irreversible covalent bonds, this method utilizes reversible non-covalent interactions such as π-π stacking, van der Waals interactions, hydrogen bonding, and, thereby allowing for dynamic, tunable, and potentially stimuli-responsive architectures. The living supramolecular polymerization is the temporal control over nucleation and elongation processes wherein the monomers are stabilized in a dormant or metastable state, and do not immediately participate in polymerization, despite external stimuli, which can induce their activation, allowing the polymerization to proceed in a controlled fashion. However, pathway complexity plays a vital role during polymerization, and the system exhibits multiple aggregation pathways that can lead to structurally distinct outcomes. For instance, the enthalpy and entropy factors explain the fast cooling or other non-equilibrium conditions favoring metastable assemblies, as kinetic pathways overcome the thermodynamic minima pathway. Such behavior is evident in assemblies of p- and n-type organic semiconductors. n-type semiconductors are major carriers for transport electrons, they represent a crucial class of materials for organic and hybrid opto-electronic devices. For example, perylene diimides (PDIs), and napthalene diimides (NDIs) have shown dynamics-controlled supramolecular polymers that influences in optical and electronic properties in device applications. Still, there is scope to investigate the low-cost syntheses of various peptide-linked n-type materials for large-scale industrial applications. Our group (Dr. Prasanth Kumar) recently reported on light-stimulated amide tethered ambipolar molecule lead to 2D polymers via seeded living polymerization (Small 2025, 21, 2504673). Another work is in progress on peptide-linked benzothiadiazole (n-type semiconductor) derivatives, and their kinetic-controlled pathway is exciting to study in detail. Further extension of this work, we aim to design and synthesize novel peptide appended n-type materials and characterize their optical properties, evaluated by UV-vis-NIR absorption, spectrofluorometer, and DFT/TDDFT,. Microscopic and diffraction techniques to assess the dynamically controlled supramolecular nanostructures, and their electronic properties probed to impedance analyses. Later, find the potential materials among the developed n-type semiconductors for the application of field-effect transistors and solar cell device fabrication. Herein, we propose few n-type organic semiconductors such as benzothiadiazole, naphthalene monoimides, and pyromellitic diimides, and tethered with a peptide chain that helps to attain the directional assemblies through intermolecular hydrogen bonding to improve the electronic properties.