Laursen Group - Nano Chemistry

The Laursen Group designs, synthesises and studies organic molecules and materials with special optical and electronic properties.

Research focus

Design, synthesis and properties of organic molecules

The group’s research focuses on organic molecules with special optical and electronic properties and their functions and applications.

The group designs, synthesises and studies new organic molecules and materials, including:

fluorescent molecules and nanoparticles for bio and medical imaging and diagnosis
fluorescent chiral molecules, such as helicenes, that can emit chiral light
molecules for laser applications
fluorescent molecular sensors for intracellular pH and metabolites
self-assembly of molecules into membranes, nanotubes and particles

Group leader

Bo W. Laursen
Professor
Office: CS16

Research

Currently our research is focused in the three main areas outlined below. Furthermore, we take part in many collaborative projects contributing our dyes and materials or our spectroscopic capacity on systems synthesized by collaborators.

Triangulenium dyes

Triangulenium dyes are carbenium ions of exceptional chemical stability, and broad structural diversity owing to the facile synthetic routes developed over the years. We constantly explore new transformations and structural motifs to expand our toolbox of dyes with unique optical properties.

Photophysics and applications of dyes

The high photo-stability and unique long fluorescence lifetime of the aza/oxa-triangulenium dyes (10-20 ns) provides attractive opportunities in time-resolved imaging and sensing, anisotropy assays and for PET base fluorescent probes/sensors.

Fluorescent molecular materials and nanostructures

When organic dyes pack close together in solid state materials or aggregates/nanostructures their optical properties are most often dramatically changed due to electronic coupling between the transition moments, which both gives reis to new optical transition and efficient energy migration in the nanostructures. We are interested in understanding these processes and to develop methods that allow us to organize the dyes in specific structures and thus control the properties.

Recently we have in particular worked with an efficient supramolecular self-assembly approach to organize cationic dyes in solid state materials by use of the anion binding macrocycle cyanostar. In the resulting “SMILES” materials the dyes are isolated and retain their intrinsic molecular properties and produces ultra-bright crystals, thin-films, polymer blends and nanoparticles.

The work is done is close collaboration with the Flood group at Indiana University