Department of Chemistry

 An international team led by Prof. Val Vullev, with Prof. Greg Beran overseeing the computational studies and Dr. Dan Borchardt providing the 2D NMR analysis, discovers unprecedentedly large effects of molecular electric dipoles on charge transfer, and develops an approach for quantifying such effects. Lowering medium polarity allows them to demonstrate enhancement of electron transfer (ET) along dipoles while completely suppressing ET against them. While medium polarity is essential for mediating ET, it also quenches dipole-generated electric fields. Molecular designs, developed by the team, attain a fine balance between these two opposing effects and permit dipole-mediated ET in hydrocarbon media. It sets an importance foundation for developing energy and electronic materials and devices. These findings are published in the link below. Angewandte Chemie, and the reviewers ranked the work as "very important" and "highly important." According to the journal editors, less than 10% of the manuscripts receive such positive reviews, and they selected it to be published as a "Hot Paper".