Victoria Birkedal has been awarded a grant from The Danish Council for Independent Research | Natural Sciences to investigate and control the optical properties of conducting polymer materials. Conductive polymers form the basis of today’s conductive plastic materials and their discovery was rewarded the 2000 Chemistry Nobel price. These materials have amazing optical and electrical properties which hold great promises for a number of applications in molecular electronics, solar cells and biomedical sensors.

In the project, the optical properties of polymers synthetized following a new route developed at Aarhus University will be investigated. The project aims at achieving control of the optical properties of this system. This will open up for a number of previously unachievable applications for molecular scale light-based devices at the interface with DNA nanotechnology.