DMREF: Autonomous Closed-Loop Discovery of Molecular Design Rules for Chiral Electronics

With the support of the Division of Chemistry, the Office of Strategic Initiatives, and the Division of Materials Research, Prof. Ying Diao and collaborators at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Washington will develop novel approaches to imparting materials with the ability to control the electron spin. This project will focus on unveiling fundamental design rules for chiral emergence from achiral semiconducting polymers. By leveraging the ability of chiral structures to control the electronic spin, the research team aims to modulate chemical reaction pathways to increase the efficiency of electron transfer and energy transduction. The fundamental knowledge to be gained from this research will inform future design of electronics and redox active materials critical for advancing semiconductor technologies. The multidisciplinary research training of students and the educational activities aim to increase the STEM workforce. The educational activities through the high school summer camp and the Electrochemical Bootcamp will be on the topics of chirality, self-driven labs, directed assembly, polymer sciences and electronics, which are aligned with the research program. This research project seeks to revolutionize electronic and energy materials by introducing supramolecular chirality and thus imparting materials with the ability to control the electronic spin. This will be achieved through merging distinct areas of research: semiconducting polymers, chirality-induced spin selectivity, and electrocatalysis, which represent three separate topics with minimal overlaps to date. This project will pursue a two-pronged approach complementing hypothesis-driven discoveries (Aim 1) with data-driven autonomous experimentation (Aim 2) to discover chiral emergence from achiral high performance redox active conducting polymers. This approach will circumvent the complex synthetic challenge for inducing chirality while also meeting the demanding requirements on electronic and redox properties. This research will test the hypothesis that spin momentum control conferred by chiral structures can serve to precisely and dynamically modulate chemical reaction pathways. The research team will demonstrate this concept through an example of green hydrogen peroxide production through electrocatalysis (Aim 3). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.