Research Supervisor Connect
This project aims to establish chiral Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) as a powerful new optical materials platform to exploit light-matter interactions for highly responsive and energy-efficient all-optical switches. Thin film optical devices based on chiral Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) can be integrated with existing fibre-optic infrastructure, offering the ability to manipulate photons with photons at ultrafast speeds.
Research Area
Professor Deanna D'Alessandro.
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
The unprecedented advances in medicine, communications, energy, transportation, computers, and national security have been enabled by a revolution in telecommunications. Modern transmission networks use light signals sent through fibre optics to transfer enormous quantities of information rapidly over long distances, and electronic circuits to process and store the transmitted information.
The ability to rationally design and synthesise Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) materials offers a key advantage: chiral MOFs are non-centrosymmetric and offer magnetic properties from metal centres and radical ligands, providing an innovative and powerful strategy to enhance the nonlinear interactions between photons that can be further manipulated using magnetic fields. These interactions form the basis of all-optical devices for computing and information processing.
In addition, structural chirality in MOFs offers enormous scope to harness selective interactions with circularly polarised light for optical switching and sensing applications.
In this project, MOFs will be synthesised using well-established methods including diffusion, solvothermal and post-synthetic modification (PSM) methods. Single crystal structures will be determined locally. A wide array of additional characterisation techniques will be employed including TGA/DSC, FT-IR and FT-Raman spectroscopies to examine the vibrational dependence of charge transfer transitions, and custom solid state Vis-NIR, EPR and FT-Raman spectroelectrochemistries. Surface area and porosity measurements will be undertaken using gas adsorption analysers, which will also be used to probe guest inclusion by gas sorption as a function of temperature.
Offering:
This scholarship is offered to both international and domestic Engineering PhD applicants for 3.5 year (fulltime) at the RTP stipend rate of $41,753 p.a (2025 RTP rate, indexed annually). A scholarship can only be offered once the applicant has an unconditional offer of admission.
The successful candidate must:
How to Apply:
To apply, please email deanna.dalessandro@sydney.edu.au and cc marcello.solomon@sydney.edu.au, with the subject line “PhD Application:” and your name. Include the following:
The opportunity ID for this research opportunity is 3642