Research

Our research is primarily curiosity-driven and aims to address fundamental questions in soft organic materials. Most of the building blocks studied in supramolecular and polymer assembly comprise of closed shell, valency satisfied molecules. On the other hand, radicals are open-shell systems with unpaired electrons. Due to the unpaired electrons, radicals are generally extremely reactive and difficult to handle under standard laboratory conditions. However, the unpaired nature of electrons in an organic molecule can lead to applications in catalysis, optoelectronics and energy storage devices. We are  excited to explore the chemistry of organic radical based systems from a self-assembly point of view to arrive at soft, sustainable materials for application in optoelectronics and battery technologies. A few specific areas currently under investigation are outlined below.

In this area, a key challenge is – to control the organization of radical polymers such that the radicals are in close proximity with one-another to promote facile charge-carrier mobility without undergoing radical disproportionation or recombination reactions. Also the role of intermolecular interactions on the morphology of radical polymers is not fully understood.

Our groups aims to control both intra- and inter-polymer chain interactions between radical units by systematically studying the influence of (i) radical density per polymer chain, (ii) the structural rigidity/flexibility of the polymer backbone and (iii) influence of external conditions such as thermal or solvent annealing on polymer organization.


In this area, we aim to control the nucleation process of supramolecular polymerization by using redox-activity, analogues to the behaviour found in some nature systems. We envisage that such a control at the nucleation stage will lead to supramolecular materials with tunable properties.

Funding