[Aspuru-Guzik group list] ANNOUNCEMENT: Excitonics Seminar, TUES, Feb. 1

Please forward to your groups ____________________________________________________________________ Center for Excitonics Seminar Series Announcement Tuesday, February 1, 2011 3:00 PM RLE Conference Room: 36-428 Mihaela C. Stefan, University of Texas at Dallas "Benzodithiophene Based Semiconducting Polymers for Organic Photovoltaics" Abstract Semiconducting polymers containing benzodithiophene with alkyl phenylethynyl substituents have been synthesized by Stille coupling. The fused central ring allows the incorporation of substituents on the central benzene core, while maintaining planarity of the two thiophene units. In addition, the symmetric nature of the benzodithiophene core eliminates the need to control the regioregularity during the polymerization process. Polymers containing pentyl, decyl and hexadecyl solubilizing alkyl substituents have been synthesized and their opto-electronic properties have been investigated. The synthesized polymers were used as donors in bulk heterojunction solar cell devices. Bio Mihaela C. Stefan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at University of Texas at Dallas. She is also holding an affiliate position in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at University of Texas at Dallas. She received her BS in Chemical Engineering, and her MS and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from Politehnica University Bucharest, Romania. She worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Matyjaszewski's group at Carnegie Mellon University from 2002 to 2003. In July, 2003, she joined McCullough's group at Carnegie Mellon University to work on the synthesis of block copolymers containing polythiophenes. Mihaela joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Dallas in August 2007. In 2009 she received the NS&M Outstanding Teacher Award which is given annually at UT Dallas based on nominations from students. She received the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from NSF in 2010. Her research group is developing novel polymeric materials for organic electronics and for drug delivery systems. Light refreshments will be served The Center for Excitonics is an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science and Office of Basic