The technologies that shape our future will increasingly involve the manipulation and utilization of visible light in areas such as computing, telecommunications, energy production, and biological imaging. Therefore, developing materials and systems to control and harness this energy is not simply a challenging avenue of fundamental scientific pursuit, but an opportunity to affect real social change with a large positive human impact. Organic materials are well suited to this task as the energies involved in many of their electronic transitions correspond well to the energy range spanned by the visible spectrum. In addition, they allow for many tailored properties on the molecular level such as optical bandgaps, emission properties, stimuli response, and electrical transport. Polymers are ubiquitous in a wide array of applications due to their ease of processing, robust mechanical properties, and tailored chemical functionality. Synergistic coupling of molecular-based properties with supramolecular assembly strategies and creative processing techniques allows for creation of hierarchical materials with a greatly expanded range of properties and functionality. In light of these concepts, research covering macromolecular systems capable of upconversion of visible light, mechanochromic stimuli response, data storage, photonics, and laser emission are presented.

Manipulating light with polymeric materials

246th National Meeting (2013)

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