Supplement: DMREF: Collaborative Research:Organic Semiconductors by Computationally-Accelerated Refinement (OSCAR)

Grants and Contracts Details

Description

Prof. Chad Risko and Prof. John Anthony request a supplement to grant No. DMR-1627428, the DMREF project titled ‘Organic Semiconductors by Computationally Accelerated Refinement’. This project suffered significant delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated shut-downs and supply chain interruptions. Because benchwork was impeded more dramatically than the computational aspects of this project, the two teams are significantly out of synchronization, and we will utilize this supplement to bring the synthetic and computational efforts back into alignment as we conclude the project. The University of Kentucky suspended all in-person activities on March 23, 2020. This action led to the complete shut-down of the synthetic aspects of this project, while computational work was able to rebound in some capacity after an initial delay. We remained locked out of our laboratories for twelve weeks, until mid-June. At that time, we were only allowed 25% occupancy of the laboratory space, meaning students had to work shifts, spending only 50% of their typical time in lab (thus, research was slowed to a 50% pace). This slowed schedule continued for six more months, until December 2020, when occupancy levels were increased and most students could return to full-time research. We will be returning to 100% capacity the first week of May 2021. The computational efforts suffered at the beginning of the shutdown as new norms for research efforts were realized and day-to-day communication within the computational effort and with the synthetic and experimental collaborators was limited. However, after an induction period, the computational efforts eventually arrived to a new “normal”, sufficient for their efforts to leap well ahead of the synthetic component of the project. We now have a rather long list of new derivatives for synthesis and analysis to verify their models, while funding for this work is quickly coming to an end (expected exhaustion of funds by mid-May). Our project period ends on 30 September.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date10/1/169/30/24

Funding

  • National Science Foundation

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