Photosynthesis, or the ability of plants, algae and some bacteria, to convert light energy into chemical energy is inspiring one research team at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to improve synthetic electronics systems.
At Illinois, researchers Ying Diao, Jeffrey Moore and Joaquin Rodríguez-López will collaborate with University of Washington researcher Xiaosong Li, the Larry R. Dalton Endowed Chair in Chemistry, and associate dean for research and Jie Xu, a staff scientist at Argonne National Laboratory.
With $2M in funding, the interdisciplinary team will combine expertise from multiple fields to realize their research goals during the next four years.
“We’re really excited about the prospect of using chiral electronics to control chemical reactions. It’s a very nascent idea, people don’t usually think about how to use electron spin to modulate reaction pathways,” said Diao, who is leading the project.
Diao, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, will focus on polymer assembly, automated processing and electronic property testing. Moore, the Stanley O. Ikenberry Chair Emeritus in the chemistry department will provide insight into polymer and materials chemistry and Rodríguez-López, a professor of chemistry, will provide guidance in automated electrochemistry and catalysis.
Li will provide support in quantum dynamics theory and machine learning and Xu, who developed PolyBot, an autonomous AI-integrated robotic software platform, will provide assistance at Argonne National Lab to autonomously develop new molecules.
“This research is important to me because it brings together two of my passions, quantum chemistry and artificial intelligence, into a powerful new framework. By integrating these fields, we can help establish a new paradigm for designing functional chirality with precision and innovation,” Li said.
Synthetic semiconductors are materials frequently used in electronic devices that conduct electricity under certain conditions or act as insulators in other conditions. These materials can be used to control the flow of electrical currents and play an important role in synthetic electronic systems like smartphones and computers.
In nature, during photosynthesis, the light-dependent chemical reactions within plants create an electron transport chain that operates on these same semiconductor principles.
Importantly, the initial steps of energy transfer during photosynthesis have near-perfect energy efficiency and lose very minimal energy to heat loss.
Plants achieve this high energy efficiency by leveraging chiral structures that control electron spin, a tactic that the Beckman researchers are drawing inspiration from.
“This project tackles a fascinating question for me,” said Rodríguez-López. “How can we drive electron transfer to influence electrochemical selectivity using what is seemingly an unconventional control knob, but in reality, nature uses it all the time?”
Chiral molecules, sometimes called twisted molecules, are ones that cannot be superimposed on their mirror image. In other words, they’re asymmetrical.
In these molecules, electron transport is spin-selective, meaning that electrons with a specific spin orientation, either up or down, pass through chiral molecules more easily than electrons with the opposite spin and conserve transferred energy.
In contrast, current synthetic electronic systems do not leverage chiral structures and exhibit random spin momentum which leads to low charge transport efficiency and excessive heating.
"I’m excited to help decipher the ‘genetic code’ that gives rise to chirality from achiral polymer structures—a question that has intrigued me since my graduate student days. With this collaboration, we may finally be able to break that code and unlock new frontiers in chiral electronics and spin-selective chemistry,” Moore said.
Together, the researchers are proposing to revolutionize electronic and energy materials by introducing supramolecular chirality and imparting polymer materials with the ability to control the electronic spin.
Their approach will involve hypothesis-driven discoveries and data-driven autonomous experimentation to design molecules that are chiral, conductive and redox reactive, ultimately enhancing electron transport, stability and functionality.
Integrating chiral components has been shown to improve efficiency of oxygen evolution reactions and oxygen reduction reactions, which parallel the naturally and highly efficient processes of photosynthesis and cellular respiration.
Introducing chirality also offers new ways to modify the electrical, optical, biological, and mechanical properties of conjugated polymers that are frequently used in electronic devices.
The proposed work is anticipated to advance knowledge in the fields of semiconducting polymers, chirality-induced spin selectivity and electrocatalysis and result in highly energy efficient systems and materials with applications in electronics, solar cells and electrochemical devices like fuel cells, batteries and supercapacitors.