Graduate Student Anthony Petty received an award for Best Poster at the Gordon Conference on Electronic Processes in Organic Materials. The conference, held in Tuscany, spanned a range of topics at the frontier of organic and hybrid electronics and optoelectronics. Mr. Petty’s poster was titled “The design and synthesis of high performance OFET materials through the crystal engineering of a general aromatic core”.  Mr.

A team of scientists at the University of Kentucky and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to develop a prototype of a battery utilizing chemical components prepared at UK. Professors Susan Odom and John Anthony (UK Chemistry) synthesized new organic compounds as donors and acceptors for a type of battery called a redox flow battery (RFB), currently of great interest for large-scale energy storage.

Two NASA Kentucky grants were awarded to support research in the Chemistry Department. Prof. Beth Guiton received funding for using single-atom resolution and in situ Imaging to determine the structure of thermoelectric materials in real-time. Profs. Susan Odom and John Anthony received funding for the development of a low temperature redox flow battery prototype for space applications.

Predicting the packing of molecules in the solid state is a major goal of researchers around the world. In their latest paper in Chemistry of Materials, Professors Chad Risko and John Anthony derive understanding as to how subtle changes in the chemical structure of trialkylsilylethynyl pentacenes, an important class of organic semiconductor materials, can impact the solid-state molecular packing arrangements that in turn determine the semiconducting characteristics.

The Small-Molecule X-Ray Crystallography Facility in the Department of Chemistry has been awarded a prestigious and highly competitive grant from the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF).  The award of $383,133 (70% NSF, 30% UK matching funds) will fund the acquisition of a state-of-the-art microfocus X-ray diffractometer.

Prof. John Anthony's publication titled "The Effect of Regioisomerism on the Crystal Packing and Device Performance of Desymmetrized Anthradithiophenes" was selected as a Hot Article for 2015 in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C, and as such it has been included in the Hot Article 2015 web collection, which can be viewed here (see page 2).

On February 22, 2016 John Anthony, a Chemistry professor at the University of Kentucky had an article featured in the Nature Communications publication.  The article titled, "Reducing dynamic disorder in small-molecule organic semiconductors by suppressing large-amplitude thermal motions," deals with understanding performance vibrations in organic semiconductors.

The article titled "Dynamics, Miscibility, and Morphology in Polymer:Molecule Blends: The Impact of Chemical Functionality". The study presents a computational chemistry investigation of polymer:molecule blends of acceptors prepared in the Anthony lab with poly(3-hexylthiophene) and the effects slight modifications in chemical structure on blend morphology. Citation: Chem. Mater. 2015, 27, 7643-7651. DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater5b02983

Summer: a time to catch up on neglected projects, reconnect with old friends and tackle that summer reading list.