Dan Congrave

Fellowship: Royal Society University Research Fellow

Title of the research: Solving Near-Infrared Triplet Harvesting

About the research

Organic electronic materials, based on carbon-rich molecules, have the potential to change the way we live by complimenting and advancing technologies across applications, owing to an unparalleled combination of easily adjustable properties and diverse processability, even onto flexible and highly curved surfaces. Organics that efficiently emit and absorb light in the near-infrared (NIR) are highly desirable for the next generation of wearable and smartphone sensors, and integral to multiple strategies that have been proposed to enhance commercial solar panels – NIR organics effectively hold the potential to benefit the efficiency of both the consumption and generation of clean energy in one fell swoop. However, NIR organics have so far been unable to fulfil this potential. In even the most efficient examples, the vast majority of energy is trapped into energy sinks known as ‘triplet states’, converting energy to unwanted heat, rather than the desired light or electricity. The research funded by this fellowship is all about developing innovative molecular design strategies to afford new materials that directly tackle these triplet states – the main cause of energy wastage in current NIR organics and a longstanding and central problem in organic electronics.

How will this fellowship help my career progression?

This generous fellowship provides an amazing level of support to start my own research group, funding the salary of myself and team members, with a substantial budget for equipment and consumables. It will provide a great platform to cement my independence and freely pursue my longstanding interests and high risk high reward research ideas.

The support the University provides

The enthusiastic support I have received moving and integrating into Chemistry at Oxford has been great, and the access to facilities is second to none.

Background

I graduated with and MChem from Bangor University in 2014 before studying for my PhD at Durham University with Prof. Martin Bryce, which I completed in 2018. I then moved to the University of Cambridge, firstly as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Hugo Bronstein, and then as an independently funded Herchel Smith Research Fellow in Organic Chemistry. In 2024 I joined Oxford as a Royal Society University Research Fellow.