Tarek Ghaddar
American University of Beirut
Contact
Department of Chemistry
AUB
PO Box: 11-0236 Beirut, Lebanon
Office +9611350000 Ext: 4057/3961
Fax + 9611365217
http://www.aub.edu.lb/~tg02
Research
My research is multidisciplinary, focusing on the relationship between structure and photochemistry in novel compounds and materials (organic and inorganic). I am particularly interested in studying electron transfer reactions in polymers by various photochemical and electrochemical means. This work is important in many industrial areas, such as: solar energy conversion, and construction of molecular electronic devices.
We have been working on designing and synthesizing novel photo-active dendrimers, and studying their electron and energy transfer reactions in solution. Dendrimers are star-like hyper-branched polymers that show very interesting characteristics as catalysis material, and lately as multi-photon absorbing compounds (see recent published work). In order to understand the mechanism of this interesting multi-photon phenomenon, characterizing the excited states, radicals, and radical ions in solution and frozen media is essential. These studies involve not only the usual techniques of organic synthesis and mechanistic chemistry, but also special applications of laser and fluorescence spectroscopy, electrochemistry, surface analysis, and other analytical methods.
Recently, I started working in the area of Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs). We investigated the use of ruthenium-based dendrimers as light harvesting arrays in DSSCs. We have found that small generation dendrimers can be effectively utilized as dyes, and as such the DSSCs output efficiencies can be increased significantly. The synthesis and performance of these dendrimers as dyes were published in Inorganic Chemistry. In collaboration with Prof. Brian ORegan and Prof. James Durrant at Imperial College, we have been involved in the synthesis of novel dyes, TG6, TS4, T18, T66 and their performance in DSSCs.
