Supramolecular nanomaterials containing phosphorescent transition metal clusters – SNAPSTER

The SNAPSTER project aims to tackle key challenges in the field of energy conversion for lighting and optoelectronics. Rare earth oxides (REO) are currently used in these fields and are nowadays considered by EU as strategic minerals for high technology applications like electric vehicles or energy efficient lighting. As the main natural resources of REO are located outside Europe, there is a real need to develop REO free emissive materials to guarantee energetic independency.
The multidisciplinary SNAPSTER project proposes a new alternative to REO containing emissive materials. SNAPSTER aims to develop new phosphorescent hybrid nanomaterials and introduce them in optoelectronic devices to evaluate their potential in terms of applicative prospects. On one hand, An[M6Qi8Xa6] (A = alkali, Q = chalcogen/halogen, X = halogen, M = Mo, Re) metal cluster compounds, obtained by high temperature synthesis, are very attractive for light emitting devices: they are highly luminescent in the red NIR and are very robust in contrast to organic dyes which suffer from photochemical, thermal or oxidative decomposition. On the other hand, molecular self-assembling is a promising way to generate nanostructured hybrid materials where functionalities are given by inorganic moieties while the structuration is mainly directed by the organic counter-part. In that way, columnar liquid crystals (LCs) are of great interest for the design of smart materials: they are easy to process, show self-organizing and structural defects self-healing abilities as well as high charge carrier mobility. Yet, one of the main challenge to overcome in hybrid materials is to prevent phase segregation between the organic and inorganic moieties. The SNAPSTER project aims to introduce metal clusters in columnar LCs by taking advantage of the ability of LC crown ether derivatives to complex the alkali ions contained in the metal cluster compounds. The convergent synthesis of these hybrid materials via coordination chemistry will give a rapid access to a library of related materials for investigation of structure-property relationships and charge transport evaluation. SNAPSTER is a multidisciplinary German-French project joining 3 research teams P1 – P3 with complementary skills in solid state and organic chemistry, hybrid materials, LC, physics and electronics. P1 and P3 have a long term ongoing collaboration, supervising jointly PhD students working on projects involving chemistry and electronic. P2 who possesses a complementary expertise in the field of organic liquid crystals containing ionic species and crown ether derivatives is now involved in a bilateral DAAD/PHC Procope program with P1 from which, first SNAPSTER proof of concept results have been published in Chem Commun in 2016. This unique German-French consortium will provide complementary training to Master,PhD students and Postdocs via secondments in the partner labs and produce innovative research with a high international impact.