Boronic Acids for Dye Sensitised Solar Cells

The aims of this project can be directly interpreted as providing significant impact for society, improved efficiency in generating electricity from sunlight has a commonly understood benefit to society by lessening reliance on fossil fuels, reducing pollution and saving money.
An excellent class of solar cell (dye sensitised solar cell DSSC) operates in a similar manner to photosynthesis. Whilst current technology is good there is still much room for improvement. The dyes used in DSSCs can themselves have detrimental environmental impacts as well as be costly and have a short operating lifetime. This project will provide new dyes that offer significant improvements relating to all these points taking a giant leap forwards to realising solar electricity generation as a cheap reliable technology for all.

Impact
The aims of this project can be directly interpreted as providing significant impact for society, improved efficiency in generating electricity from sunlight has a commonly recognised benefit to society by lessening reliance on fossil fuels, reducing pollution and saving money.
This project proposes to transfer and exploit the technological expertise of the applicant to the organic dye-sensitised solar cell arena, which significantly mitigates risk and adds value for money by enlisting the help of a new collaborative partner, with arguably the highest profile in the area of DSSC devices the chance of success is very high. Improvements in DSSCs envisaged as a result of this research programme in dramatically improving cost efficiencies from a number of standpoints significantly enhances the likelihood of uptake of the technology by the wider population. The resultant devices would be highly desirable as they would be both cost saving and realise "green" energy generation.
It is proposed that the applicant will visit EPFL to learn about DSSCs hands-on, in so doing he will assimilate valuable knowledge which will be transferred to students and colleagues in the UK.
The synthesis of the proposed molecules and their application to DSSC devices resulting from this relatively short programme of work will provide preliminary results that will be protected by suitable patents and then communicated to the scientific community by a series of publications in high impact journals, such as JACS and Angewandte. It is expected that as a consequence of this first grant follow-up programmes, over a longer time frame would, enhance the preliminary finds yet further and lead to these results feeding into papers published in Nature Photonics or Nature Chemistry for example. Research findings will also be presented at international conferences and communicated to a wider audience through University press releases, interaction with local schools and promotion of publications on the internet.
Building from the preliminary results of this proposal, and the new collaborative opportunities it affords, will permit a catalogue of larger grant proposals to be prepared building a long lasting research programme that has the potential to deliver a career's worth of high-impact outputs. It is noteworthy that there are significant EU programmes, targeted at larger multi-centre collaborative teams, which specifically focus on the development of metal-free sensitizers in this area. This demonstrates both the importance of this area in the EU and how, if awarded, this grant will allow the applicant to build a track record of European collaboration and associated outputs that will allow him to join and later lead such teams in applications to larger European grants.
This project will establish a reputation for excellence in the field of energy and solar cell research and will serve to boost the applicant and the host institution's reputation and international standing. It will support the current strategy of enhancing the University of Birmingham's profile and impact in Energy - using interdisciplinary knowledge to enhance the efficiency of photovoltaics - a source of renewable energy. Equally working with the EPFL in Switzerland will lead to future researcher exchange and further enhance research output productivity and international awareness of the excellent research activities of the applicant, the host institution and the UK.
In terms of wider impact and mitigating research output risk, all the boronic acid molecules synthesised will also be good candidates for chemosensors in the saccharide recognition and fluoride sensing areas. Therefore the molecules synthesised in this project can feed into projects related to disease diagnosis, health monitoring, clean water technology and chemical weapons detection, each area having its own impact demonstrating the potential for this project to cross fertilise developments across traditional boundaries