PhD, California Institute of Technology, 1999 Senior Development Chemist, PPG Industries, 1999-2000 Postdoctoral Fellow, Carnegie Mellon University, 2002-2005 Research Associate, Carnegie Mellon University, 2005-2008 Visiting Scientist, Helmholtz Centre Berlin for Materials and Energy, 2008-2009 Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces Fellowship, 2008 DAAD Faculty Research Visit Grant to Germany, 2009 Glennan Fellowship, UCITE, Case Western Reserve University, 2011-2012 Mentor Fellowship, UCITE, Case Western Reserve University, 2011-2012 Active Learning Fellow, ITS, Case Western Reserve University, 2014-2015

Materials & Energy/Organic Chemistry/Physical Chemistry/Functional Polymers/Structure-Property Relationships/Nanoscale Morphology/Solar Energy Conversion/Organic Electronics

Professor Sauvé’s group is focused on developing new conjugated molecules and polymers with interesting properties for opto-electronic applications, and studying their structure-property relationships. Members of our group do synthesis of new molecules and polymers, study their optical and electrochemical properties, study their morphology of thin-films and evaluate their performance in solar cells and in transistors. We collaborate actively with several groups across many disciplines, including physics, chemistry and engineering.

Research interests Synthesis of novel conjugated molecules and polymers for organic electronic applications; Creation and study of non-fullerene electron acceptors; Investigation of structure-property relationships; Charge transport; Molecular engineering; Solar energy conversion, Plastic solar cells, Low-band gap materials, Self-assembly, Nanoscale morphology in thin films, Device performance, Organic field-effect transistors.

Techniques used by our group members Synthesis of molecules and polymers, Schlenk-line technique, NMR, GC/MS, GPC, MALDI-TOF MS, TGA, DSC, UV/Vis absorption spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, infrared spectroscopy, thin-film formation, AFM, TEM, fabrication of organic solar cells, measurement of solar cell performance, DFT calculations, multidisciplinary research.

Fernando, R.; Etheridge, F.; Muller, E.; Sauve, G.* “Effect of vinylphenyl N-substituent on the opto-electronic properties of core-substituted naphthalenediimides”, New J. Chem. ASAP. DOI:10.1039/c4nj01645a Senevirathna, W.; Liao, J.-Y.; Gu, J.; Porter, M.; Wang, C.; Fernando, R.; Sauve, G.* “Synthesis, characterization and photovoltaic properties of electron accepting azadipyrromethene based dyes: effect of pyrrolic substituents”, J. Mater. Chem. A., 2015, 3, 4203-4214. Mao Z.; Senevirathna, W.; Liao, J.-Y.; Gu, J.; Vajjala Kesava, S.; Guo, C.; Gomez, E. D.; Sauve, G.* “Three-dimensional non-fullerene acceptors for high performance organic photovoltaics”, Adv. Mater., 2014, 26, 6290-6294. Senevirathna, W.; Daddario, C. M.; Sauve, G.* “Density functional theory study predicts low reorganization energies for azadipyrromethene-based metal complexes”, J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 2014, 5, 935-941. Fernando, R.; Mao, Z.; Muller, E.; Ruan, F.; Sauvé, G.* “Tuning the organic solar cell performance of acceptor 2,6-dialkylaminonaphthalene diimides by varying a linker between the imide nitrogen and a thiophene group”, J. Phys. Chem. C., 2014, 118, 3433-3442. Senevirathna, W.; Sauvé, G.* “Introducing 3D conjugated acceptors with intense red absorption: homoleptic metal (II) complexes of di(phenylacetylene) azadipyrromethene”, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2013, 1, 6684-6694.

Gao, L.; Senevirathna, W.; Sauvé, G.* “Azadipyrromethene-based conjugated oligomers with near-IR absorption and high electron affinity” Org. Lett. 2011, 13, 5354-5357.