USM Polymer Professor Co-Authors Important Research Paper on High-Spin Organic Materials

University of Southern Mississippi (USM) polymer Professor Jason D. Azoulay has co-authored a paper that outlines groundbreaking research into the potential for new high-spin organic materials. The paper appears in the May 24 edition of highly acclaimed research journal Science Advances.

A total of 13 different authors collaborated on the paper, titled: “A high-spin ground-state donor-acceptor conjugated polymer.”

In the paper, the authors note that interest in high-spin organic materials is driven by opportunities to enable far-reaching fundamental science and develop technologies that integrate light element spin, magnetic, and quantum functionalities. Although extensively studied, the intrinsic instability of these materials complicates synthesis and precludes an understanding of how fundamental properties associated with the nature of the chemical bond and electron pairing in organic materials systems manifest in practical applications.

“We implemented an entirely new macromolecular design in order to yield a material that is high-spin and stable in its neutral form,” said Azoulay, who served as corresponding author on the paper. “While predicted by Hund's Rule, such materials have eluded synthesis until now.”

“These studies are the first of their kind that overcome significant and historically rooted challenges associated with high-spin organic materials and open access to a broad variety of technologically relevant applications thought of as beyond the current scope of functional organic materials systems,” he added.

Azoulay notes that the project was a multi-year, multi-institution investigation which demonstrates a significant advance and overcomes important fundamental problems when compared to current state-of-the-art approaches.

“The design guidelines disclosed will not only be the basis for a new generation of materials with more complex and tunable electronic structures, emergent functionalities and new devices, but will also serve as a platform for fundamental investigations of chemical bonding and electron pairing in organic materials systems,” said Azoulay. “We believe this paper will be recognized as one of the pioneering efforts in this area.”

Science Advances is an online-only gold open access journal from AAAS, the publisher of Science. It publishes high-quality, original research and reviews in all disciplines of science. Science Advances is run by a board of prominent, active research scientists who guide the direction and maintain the high standards of the journal.

To read the paper's entirety, visit: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/5/eaav2336