Wednesday, 2 November 11:00am – 12:00pm

This seminar will be delivered in Chemistry Lecture Theatre 4 and Online Zoom. Please email chemistry.researchsupport@sydney.edu.au for zoom link and password.

Speaker: Prof. Prashant Sonar; Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

Host: Dr Max Roemer

Title: Novel π-Functional Conjugated and Carbon Dot Soft Materials for Photonics, Electronics, and Sensing

Abstract: Next generation active electronic materials used in devices are undergoing continual improvements to generate devices that are high performance, lighter, flexible, stretchable, and more energy efficient with lower cost. Carbon based novel solution processable π-functional conjugated materials are the focus of intense academic and industrial research since they are important class of soft materials for large area electronics including transistors, displays, sensors and light harvesting devices. The active organic semiconducting materials are emerging due to their tunable light absorption/emission, interesting charge transport properties, relatively adequate HOMO-LUMO energies and ink formulation capability.

In my talk, I will explain the various classes of conjugated carbon-based materials either as polymers, small molecules or quantum dots prepared via chemically and electrochemically using various novel aromatic conjugated building blocks. In this presentation, the design, synthesis, optoelectronic properties, and device performance of novel advanced materials for field effect/electrochemical transistors, perovskite solar cells, light emitting diodes, optical sensors and various sensing devices will be discussed. Such materials and devices have great potential in future electronics, energy, health, and environmental monitoring.

Biograohy: Prof. Prashant Sonar is Former ARC Future Fellow and Professor in School of Chemistry and Physics and Centre for Material Science. Faculty of Science at Queensland University of Technology, (QUT), and Australia. He was Visiting Professor at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2017. He holds adjunct position with Griffith University, Australia and Adjunct Research Fellow position at Organic Electronic Research Centre, Ming Chi University of Technology, New Taipei City, Taiwan. Currently, he is serving as an Associate Editor of the journal Flexible and Printed Electronics, Material Research Express (Institute of Physics, London), Frontier in Chemistry and Energies (MDPI, Switzerland). Recently, he has been elected as Fellow of Royal Chemical Society (FRSC) and Foreign Fellow of Maharashtra Academy of Sciences (FFMAS). He is a recipient of the Award for Excellence-Impact and Translation (2020), Centre for Materials Science, QUT, Australia and IAAM Scientist Award from International Association of Advanced Materials, Sweden (2020) respectively. He also received Thiemann Exchange Program Award to visit Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (2017), Israel and Foreign Collaborator Award from Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas, MEXT, (2016) Japan. He awarded Vice-Chancellors Performance Award from QUT Australia (2016).

Prof. Sonar delivered total 90 talks (keynote, plenary and invited) at various international conferences and institutes. He has published 223 peer-reviewed research papers (H-index-51 with 9700 citations according to Google Scholar) and filed 3 US patents. His two patents have been successfully licensed to the US based company.