Dr. Vullev leads an international team of collaborators, including Prof. Daniel Gryko from the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Prof. Gregory Beran from the Department of Chemistry at UCR, and Dr. Ctirad Červinka, a Fulbright Fellow from the Department of Physical Chemistry at the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, the Czech Republic, that uses molecular engineering of bioinspired electrets and theoretical analysis to answer important fundamental questions pertinent to charge-transfer science. Specifically, lowering medium polarity enhances the rates of photoinduced electron transfer along the dipoles, while completely shuts off the one against. It appears counterintuitive because non-polar media suppresses charge transfer between non-charged species. Lowering medium polarity, however, also improves the permittivity of the dipole-generated localized electric fields. The researchers successfully balance these two opposing polarity effects to achieve unprecedentedly large differences in the rates of electron transfer along vs. against the dipole, and demonstrate a means for quantifying them. The report of these discoveries received the highest rankings by the reviewers and was selected by the editorial team of Angewandte Chemieto be published as a Hot Paper. This report has gained quite traction online: here

A news release can be found here