Device-applicable materials for these applications need to fulfill several requirements, such as manufacturability, large optical effects, and long term stability. Individually, all of these parameters are easy to optimize, but all of them are difficult to combine in a single film.
Interesting approaches are therefore multicomponent systems.
These are either based on compounds where the active components are covalently linked to each other, or where they are linked only through weak interactions. In our group we are interested in developing such multicomponent systems. Possible chromophores are metal polypyridine derivatives or ferrocene derivatives. Synthesis on new complexes with phosphorus-analogs of the ligands pyridine, and bipyridine, phosphinine and biphosphinine, and evaluation of their luminescent or nonlinear optical properties. Use of thiophene derivatized with crown-ethers, to study the possibility of doping with lanthanide cations, which will allow control of luminescence through applied potential.