The X Edition of the Doctoral Workshop of the PhD program in Chemistry is organized by the UAB’s Department of Chemistry with the objective of strengthening the relationships between the different research groups that are a part of the Department.

This year, 34 PhD Researchers from different institutions had the opportunity to exchange research experiences and new ideas to stablish and promote interdisciplinary and ambitious research projects.

Besides the collaboration with other Phd researchers, the event allowed them to assist to an exciting series of plenary lectures by international experts of both academia and industry. The organizing committee also judged the students’ presentations and posters, with 4 prizes available to reward the best research projects.

Sohini Sinha, one of the seven ICMAB PhD researchers at the Workshop, was awarded with a Distinguished Diploma for her poster and presentation on her work at the Inorganic Materials & Catalysis (LMI) Group: "Development of Luminescent Donor-Acceptor Type π-Conjugated Systems Containing Carborane".

Development of Luminescent Donor-Acceptor Type π-Conjugated Systems Containing Carborane. Poster by Sohini Sinha.

The poster describes the synthesis of donor-acceptor or acceptor-donor type π-conjugated systems containing o-carborane, a polyhedral boron cluster containing two adjacent carbon atoms in the cluster cage that showcases interesting properties like electron-withdrawing capacity, high polarizable spherical aromaticity through σ-delocalized electrons, and characteristic electronic properties as well as thermal, chemical and photochemical stability. All of these properties make this system interesting for applications on biomedicine, especially in super-resolution fluorescence microscopy and also in optical limiting.

Sohini Sinha is a DOC-FAM PhD researcher at the LMI group. Her PhD thesis is supervised by ICMAB researcher Rosario Núñez, who is part of the Doctoral Programme in Chemistry committee, in charge or organizing this workshop. 

Congratulations, Sohini!

Abstract of the study presented

Development of Luminescent Donor-Acceptor Type π-Conjugated Systems Containing Carborane

S. Sinha; F. Teixidor; C. Viñas;  R. Núñeza (ICMAB-CSIC, Campus de la UAB, Bellaterra-Barcelona, Spain)
M. Romero; N. Farfán (Facultad de Química, Departamento de Química Orgánica, UNAM, México D.F., México)

Icosahedral 1,2-dicarba-closo-dodecacarborane or o-carborane is a polyhedral boron cluster containing two adjacent carbon atoms in the cluster cage, which has unique features such as electron-withdrawing capacity, high polarizable spherical aromaticity through σ-delocalized electrons, characteristic electronic properties as well as thermal, chemical and photochemical stability. These key attributes make them interesting systems, especially for luminescent materials. Also, the intrinsic electronic feature and bulkiness of carboranyl units might shed light on unique photophysical properties owing to fluorescence enhancement in solid state, making these aggregation induced emission luminogens (AIEgens), which could be extensively studied and utilised in optical devices. Thus, we aimed to prepare donoracceptor or acceptor-donor type π-conjugated systems containing o-carborane as an acceptor group. To this purpose, insertion reaction of decaborane (B10H14) into the acetylene precursors of different fluorophores was performed and these systems have been synthesized and characterized by usual techniques such as FT-IR and 1H, 13C and 11B NMR spectroscopy. Furthermore, their photophysical properties were analysed by UV-vis and fluorescence spectroscopies both in solution and solid state, which could lead them to a prospective application in biomedicine, especially in super-resolution fluorescence microscopy and also in optical limiting.