At the invitation of AISMST, Prof. Michael Ryan HANSEN from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster visited us and gave a talk titled “From Molecules to Polymers: Insights on Molecular Packing, Conformation and Dynamics from Solid-State NMR”.

 Prof. Michael Ryan HANSEN from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

Polymers with extended π-conjugation are currently of broad scientific interest due to their promising applications as the active semiconducting material in flexible organic electronic devices. Solution processing can be used to fabricate π-conjugated polymer films, but it is generally semi-crystalline and lack long-range order, rendering it difficult to access the molecular organization using traditional approaches like XRD.

 Audience attending the Lecture

Prof. HANSEN introduced a general strategy for obtaining the information of molecular packings through a combination of XRD, quantum calculation and solid-state NMR experiments. Such strategy is well applied in P3HT, donner-acceptor polymers, macrocyclic molecules and so on.

 Discussion

In the final, Prof. HANSEN introduced a solid-state NMR method to obtain the site-specific information of molecular motions in discotic liquid crystal systems. 

This talk covers a very broad subjects in solid-state NMR and polymers, which well demonstrates that solid-state NMR is a very powerful tool for elucidating the structures and dynamics in polymers.