Research Projects

Circularly Polarized Luminescent materials have recently been of great importance due to their applications in optical chiral sensors, security tags, optoelectronic devices, data storage, encryption systems etc. These materials are usually made of small organic molecules, liquid crystals, polymers, inorganic metal complexes, lanthanide (Ln) complexes and various supramolecules. Out of all these, Ln base materials are of great importance due to their various unique properties like strong CPL/glum with distinct emission, minimum photobleaching, Long emission lifetime (1 ms), Large emission range (Blue to NIR) and good quantum yield. Thus, CPL active Ln materials have been increasing recently. But, all these materials are Ln-complex with organic chiral ligand and requires multi-step synthesis with harsh condition. Thus, making this material is not easy and costly. In this project, we are developing an alternative way to synthesise these materials. We will synthesis supramolecular luminescent lanthanide gels based on small molecules and their self-assembly. We will also improve the glum by using an energy transfer mechanism. The synthesised material will be used as a security marker/tag. The potential applications will be further expanded into developing sensors, bio-imaging etc, especially to distinguish molecules or materials with different chirality.