Friday, 1 November 2024 11:00am – 12:00pm

This seminar will be delivered in Lecture Theatre 3

Speaker: Prof Thelakkat

Host: A/Prof. Markus Muellner

Title: How to design polymers to fulfil functions in biosensors, thermoelectrics and batteries?

Abstract: The main theme of the talk will be the principles of polymer architecture and structural changes in conjugated polymers, conjugated polyelectrolytes and polymer electrolytes to fulfil diverse properties in modern applications such as solar cells, biosensors, thermoelectrics as well as batteries. The diverse applications demand a wide variety of structural changes and adaptation of hydrophobicity and hydriophilicity in addition to tuning and optimization of charge transport from pure electronic or ionic conductors to mixed conductors. With suitable examples of polymers, the design principles and applications will be demonstrated in various devices. An additional aspect of doping of conjugated polymers and the consequences of a novel and stable p-doping strategy will also be discussed.

Selected References:

1. Comparative Study of the Mechanical Reinforcement by Blending, Filling, and Block Copolymerization in Bottlebrush Polymer Electrolytes, Petry, Thelakkat et al. ACS Appl. Polym. Mater. 2024, 6, 5109−5120.
2. A competitive n-Type OECT Material via Copolymerization of Electron Deficient Building Blocks; Erhardt, MT, et al. Adv. Electron. Mater. 2023, 2300026
3. Solid polymer electrolytes from polyesters with diester sidechains for lithium metal batteries, D. Rosenbach, M. Thelakkat et al, J. Mater. Chem. A 2022, 10, 8932-8947.
4. Highly Efficient Doping of Conjugated Polymers using Multielectron Acceptor Salts; G. Krauss, M. Thelakkat, et al. Macromolecular Rapid Communications, 2021, 42, 2100443.
5. Polydiketopyrrolopyrroles Carrying Ethylene Glycol Substituents as Efficient Mixed-Ion Conductors for Biocompatible Organic Electrochemical Transistors; G. Krauss, M. Thelakkat,; Adv. Funct. Mater. 2021, 31, 2010048.

Bio: Mukundan Thelakkat is born in a remote village, Konnencherry, Palakkad District, Kerala State, India and he studied upto Masters in Chemistry under different colleges in Calicut and Kerala Universities in Kerala. He could afford his Masters study only because of a national merit scholarship and he was first Rank holder in MSc at Calicut University, Kerala. He moved abroad with an international PhD fellowship and after obtaining PhD in Organic and Polymer Chemistry from Friedrich- Schiller University, Jena, Germany in 1992, Thelakkat joined one of the biggest multinational Chemical Companies in Germany, BASF at Ludwigshafen, as a Postdoc. In 1995, he returned to academia and joined The University of Bayreuth, Germany as a guest scientist and qualified for being a Professor by finishing Habilitation in Polymer Chemistry and Functional Materials. In 2004, Thelakkat had a research stay at General Electric Research (GE, New York State, USA). From 2006 onwards is Thelakkat Professor for Applied Functional Materials at The University of Bayreuth, Germany.

The key theme running through his research work is design, synthesis and applications of tailor-made functional materials for electronic and electrical applications. The main emphasis is on energy conversion and storage. The diverse device applications include organic field effect transistors, biosensors, batteries, solar cells and thermoelectrics. Most of these devices based on soft polymeric functional materials allow the fabrication of devices in non-conventional, flexible, stretchable and implantable geometries as shown in a sketch below.

Thelakkat has coordinated many international multimillion Euro research projects on energy topics, he is Board member of Bavarian-Indian Science and Technology Centre (BAYIND) in Germany, he is  Advisory Board Member of Presidential Commission of Internationalization at University of Bayreuth. He is also Member of Bavarian Polymer Institute (BPI) and Bavarian Battery Technology Center (BAYBATT). At present, he is a visiting VAJRA Fellow of DST at JNCASR, Bangalore.

Scientific & Publications record: > 260 peer-reviewed papers, about 20 international patents with companies such as BASF, Siemens, GE etc.

h-index: Google Scholar: 62, WoS: 59; Citations of papers: 13 936 (GS), 12 000 (WoS)