09/12/2016
Distinguished Lecture by Professor Klaus Müllen at UoH
The School of Chemistry, University of Hyderabad (UoH) organized a Distinguished Lecture by Professor Klaus Müllen Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research Mainz, Germany titled “A Polymer Chemistry of Graphenes and Graphene Nanoribbons” on December 9, 2016 at the Auditorium C R Rao Institute, at UoH.
Prof. Klaus while delivering the lecture said that Carbon materials are of immense practical importance, but are often known as structurally ill-defined “black stuff” such as soot. Graphenes and graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), their geometrically restricted cutouts, are new additions to the carbon family which are widely praised as multifunctional wonder materials and rich playgrounds for physicists. Indeed, graphenes hold enormous promise as materials for energy technologies. He further said, that, GNRs are regarded as a new generation of semiconductors superior to silicon in view of the required miniaturization of printed circuits & superior to and classical conjugated polymers due to better band structure control. Above all, however, graphene as a two-dimensional polymer and GNRs are true challenges for materials synthesis, he added.
Prof. Klaus said that the approach graphene fabrication in two steps. “Top-down” protocols such as electrochemical exfoliation are applied for batteries, fuel cells and photodetectors. He said that in the “bottom-up” synthesis of GNRs, repetitive cycloaddition reactions in solution are shown to afford multiply branched polyphenylene polymers which then serve as precursors for perfectly “graphitized”, solution-processable GNRs as long as 600 nm. An alternative on surface synthesis utilizes immobilization of suitable monomers and in-situ STM-control of the polymerization to secure structural perfection. He also said that it is thus a synthetic breakthrough which leads to new materials science and physics such as single-molecule field effect transistors from GNRs and even spintronics. The present fundamental study is far away from robust
Prof. M. Durga Prasad, Dean, School of Chemistry welcomed the guest while Dr. Chandra Sekhar, faculty at School of Chemistry introduced the speaker which was attended by the faculty, students and staff.
About the speaker
Klaus Müllen joined the Max Planck Society in 1989 as one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPIP). Currently he is an Emirates Director at MPIP. His PhD degree was granted by the University of Basel in 1972. He received his habilitation in 1977 at ETH, Zürich. In 1979 he became a Professor at the University of Cologne, and in 1983 at the Johannes-Gutenberg-University, Mainz. He owns about 60 patents, published over 1700 papers and has a h-index of 125 (over 78000 citations).
He is member of the Editorial Boards of Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics; Journal of Materials Chemistry; Journal of Macromolecular Science; Pure and Applied Chemistry; Chemistry of Materials; Chemistry Letters; Chemistry World; Accounts of Chemical Research; Macromolecules; Macromolecules – An Indian Journal; BioChemistry – An Indian Journal; Chemistry – An Asian Journal; BioNanoMaterials; Synthetic Metals, Polymer Bulletin and Journal of the American Chemical Society (Associate Editor).
He served as President of the German Chemical Society and German Association for the Advancement of Science and Medicine. He received several honorary doctorates, honorary professorships, visiting professorships and named lectureship awards. He is active member of Senate of the Max Planck Society, European Academy of Sciences, Israel Chemical Society, German Academy Leopoldina, North Rhine Westphalian Academy for Arts and Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Spinoza Selection Committee of the Netherlands.
