Korea University · Materials Science
Professor Sang Ook Kang's research lab specializes in the design and synthesis of advanced organic and hybrid materials for renewable energy applications, with a strong focus on dye-sensitized solar cells, photocatalytic hydrogen and syngas production, and charge-transfer systems. The lab develops novel organic sensitizers, covalent dyads, and functionalized clusters—such as those incorporating o-carborane, triphenylamine, and transition metal catalysts—to enable efficient light harvesting, electron transfer, and catalytic activity under visible light. Their work emphasizes structure-property relationships in donor-acceptor systems, aiming to achieve high photovoltaic efficiency and stable, tunable photocatalytic performance.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
A quasi-solid-state dye-sensitized solar cell with novel organic sensitizers incorporating a benzothiadiazole chromophore showed excellent long-term stability, which exhibited 10% decrease during the 1000 h light soaking; the optimized cell gave a short circuit photocurrent density of 12.03 mA cm−2, an open circuit voltage of 0.720 V and a fill factor of 0.76, corresponding to an overall conversion efficiency of 6.61% under standard global AM 1.5 solar conditions.
Visible-light irradiation of a ternary hybrid catalyst prepared by grafting a dye, an H<sub>2</sub> evolving Co<sup>III</sup> catalyst and a CO-producing Re<sup>I</sup> catalyst on TiO<sub>2</sub> have been found to produce both H<sub>2</sub> and CO (syngas) in CO<sub>2</sub> -saturated N,N-dimethyl formamide (DMF)/water solution containing a 0.1 m sacrificial electron donor. The H<sub>2</sub> /CO ratios are effectively controlled by changing either the water content of the solvent or the molar
Organic dyes with long alkyl chains have been synthesized and demonstrated to be highly efficient sensitizers for liquid and quasi-solid-state solar cells, giving power conversion efficiencies of 8.31-8.39% and 7.03-7.31% under AM 1.5 G irradiation, respectively.
The reaction of the 3,3[prime or minute]-dilithiobithieno complex with TipB(OMe)(2) affords a borole with an extended conjugated electron-rich [small pi]-electron system; the electronic perturbation by the introduction of push-pull substituents is described.
o-Carborane-based donor-acceptor dyads comprising an o-carboranyl phenyl unit combined with N-carbazole (1) or 4-phenyl-N-carbazole (2) were prepared, and their dyad characters were confirmed by steady-state photochemistry and photodynamic experiments as well as electrochemical studies. The absorption and electrochemical properties of the dyads were essentially the sum of those of the carbazole and o-carboranyl phenyl units; this indicates negligible interaction between the carbazole and o-carbo
Electron donor-acceptor (D-A) systems with a triphenylamino moiety (D) and ortho-carborane (A) show three kinds of intriguing emissions that can be attributed to the local excited state, the intramolecular charge-transfer state, and the aggregation-induced emission state. The emission behaviors depend on which positions of the carborane are substituted.
Carborane-based donor-π-acceptor triads (D-π-A-π-D) bearing triarylamine moieties were synthesised. All the monomeric triads showed a blue-green emission in a dilute solution, which was assigned as an intramolecular charge-transfer (CT) emission. The intramolecular CT emission showed large Stokes shifts at a higher solvent polarity. The intramolecular CT emission further shifted to a longer wavelength with the increase in π-conjugation. Interestingly, a strong red emission was observed in highly
A Mn(I)-based hybrid system (OrgD-|TiO2|-MnP) for photocatalytic CO2 reduction is designed to be a coassembly of Mn(4,4′-Y2-bpy)(CO)3Br (MnP; Y = CH2PO(OH)2) and (E)-3-[5-(4-(diphenylamino)phenyl)-2,2′-bithiophen-2′-yl]-2-cyanoacrylic acid (OrgD) on TiO2 semiconductor particles. The OrgD-|TiO2|-MnP hybrid reveals persistent photocatalytic behavior, giving high turnover numbers and good product selectivity (HCOO– versus CO). As a typical run, visible-light irradiation of the hybrid catalyst in th
The influence of π-conjugation structural changes on photoinduced electron transfer (PET) and intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) processes in π-conjugated donor (D)-acceptor (A) dyads (D-π-A) was investigated. Three types of D-π-A dyads were prepared through the modification of the structure of their π-conjugated linker, including D-π-A (1) and D-π<sub>tw</sub>-A (2) having a twisted π-conjugation, and D-π-Si-π-A (3) with a π-conjugation severed by a Si-atom. In these dyads, carbazole (Cz) and
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