Welcome to Molecular Materials Lab


We are synthetic chemists who like to play with synthesis tools and create exciting functional molecular materials.

We are interested in designing new molecular materials for opto-electronic applications. Our primary focus is on the synthesis of ideal fluorescent systems capable of exhibiting exciting optical properties in solution and solid, specially, circularly polarized luminescence (CPL). CPL is an emerging field of research and is expected to revolutionize the display and imaging techniques. New materials capable of exhibiting CPL and doing so in solid-state are highly demanded. In our group at Ashoka, we are aiming to develop novel organic CPL materials, and trying to widen the scope of their applicability.

Besides CPL, our group is deeply interested in design & synthesis of system that can up-convert the energy of incident photons. We are particularly interested in Triplet-triplet annihilation based photon up-conversion (TTA-UC). Photon up-converting materials could be extremely helpful in increasing the efficiency of light-driven processes such as photodynamic therapy (PDT), controlled drug delivery, bio-imaging, photo-catalysis, solar cells, etc.

Some of the active projects in our group are about molecular engineering of fluorescent systems to optimize their performances in: