Natalia Shustova
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Chemistry
Materials that change their properties when hit with light or heat could power faster optoelectronics, smart sensors, light-driven catalysts, self-healing materials, artificial muscles and on-demand drug delivery. Many of these materials rely on photochromic molecules, which switch between two shapes when they absorb light (photoisomerization).
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
stimuli-responsive materials
photochromic materials
photoisomerization
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Develop synthetic routes that integrate two distinct classes of photochromic linkers, light-switchable molecular struts, within the same well-defined material platform.
- Use the material's tailorable internal voids to allow bulky photochromic groups to switch shape reversibly, and evacuate the pores to speed photoisomerization and material response.
- Tune the photophysical properties of hybrid stimuli-responsive materials using orthogonal external stimuli such as light and heat, applied independently or cooperatively.
More about the research
In a solid, however, such switching is often slow or blocked. The basic rules for making materials that switch quickly and reversibly, and that respond to one stimulus or several, are still poorly understood.
Why it matters
Learning how to make solids that switch quickly and reversibly under light or heat could inform next-generation sensors, smart capacitors, heterogeneous photocatalysts, recyclable and self-healing materials, artificial muscles, high-speed optoelectronics and on-demand drug delivery systems. The work adds fundamental design principles that materials chemists could use to build such devices.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Morgan Stefik
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Materials Science
Determine how the chemical reactivity of polymers and nanoparticles controls lasting polymer-nanoparticle binding, so that designed polymer structure-directing agents keep particles in the order they were added.
Frieder Jaekle
Rutgers University-Newark, NJ·Chemistry
Attach multiple boron-nitrogen Lewis pairs to acenes, flat molecules of fused carbon rings, and measure how extending the ring system changes their electronic structure and their absorption and emission of light.
Lin Chen
Northwestern University, IL·Chemistry
Track how charge carriers and excitons localize and evolve in organic metal halide hybrids on femtosecond timescales using ultrafast optical spectroscopy.
The school
University of South Carolina-Columbia: 22 labs on PI Pages, $277M a year on research, 425 research doctorates a year.
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