Organic scintillators have many crucial applications in the field of security, nuclear medicine and high energy physics. In recent years Organic Glass Scintillators (OGS) showed increase performances compared to traditional plastic scintillator or organic monocrystal. The aim of this project is to synthesize and characterize new class of molecules that could form amorphous solid. The amorphous phase (organic glass) will be promoted by innovative molecular design that will focus on branched molecules with high degrees of mobility or a lot of stable conformers to make it hard to crystalized. We also envision using fluorophores bearing highly bulky moieties to limit p-stacking interactions, thereby hindering regular stacking and promoting amorphous phase. These molecules will contain aromatics building blocks such as benzene, biphenyl, diphenyl oxazole and naphthalene which are necessary for the scintillation process. In this project we aim to develop two different families of potential OGS:
- Fluorophores connected through alkyl or ethylene oxide linkers of various lengths: A major challenge will lie in establishing efficient and scalable synthetic routes suitable for gram-scale production. The proposed approach includes cross-coupling reactions, selective hydrogenation steps, and other established organometallic techniques.
- Single-benzene fluorophores (SBFs): SBFs represent a recently emerging class of compounds with promising features for the development of OGS. Their small size, easily tunable structures, and potential for covalent assembly make them attractive building blocks. A part of this project will be dedicated to the design of molecular architectures incorporating these fluorophores and promoting the formation of amorphous phases.