Speakers

Prof. Vivian Wing-Wah YAM obtained both her BSc (Hons) and PhD from The University of Hong Kong, and is currently the Philip Wong Wilson Wong Professor in Chemistry and Energy and Chair Professor of Chemistry. She was elected to Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, International Member (Foreign Associate) of US National Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member of Academia Europaea, Fellow of TWAS and Founding Member of The Hong Kong Academy of Sciences. She was the Laureate of 2011 L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award. Her research interests include inorganic/organometallic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, photophysics and photochemistry, and metal-based molecular functional materials for sensing, organic optoelectronics and energy research.

From Discrete Metal-Ligand Motifs To Supramolecular Assembly,

Nanostructures and Light-Enabled and Electronic Functions

Abstract

Recent works in our laboratory have shown that novel classes of light-absorbing and luminescent metal-containing molecular materials could be assembled through the use of various chromophoric metal-ligand coordination motifs. In this presentation, various design and synthetic strategies together with the successful isolation of new classes of chromophoric and luminescent metal complexes will be described. These metal complexes have been shown to display rich optical and luminescence behavior. Correlations of the chromophoric and luminescence behavior with the electronic and structural effects of the metal complexes have been made to elucidate their spectroscopic origins. A number of these simple discrete metal complexes are found to undergo supramolecular assembly to give a variety of nanostructures and morphologies. By understanding the spectroscopic origin and the structure-property relationships, different approaches and assembly motifs have been employed to tune their electronic absorption and emission characteristics. The exploration into the potential applications and functions of these metal-ligand chromophores and luminophores as efficient light-emitting materials, molecular optoelectronics and memories will also be described.