The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) selected Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU) to receive $749,976 to research using carbonyl as an infrared reporter to probe the nature of charges in donor-acceptor-type conjugated molecules.

The funding will be allocated over three years, a recent KRQE report said. ENMU is a partner in the project with the University of New Mexico (UNM) and New Mexico State University (NMSU).

“I am proud that three New Mexico Universities are part of this endeavor as are the students, both undergraduate and graduate, as well as the post-docs,” Dr. Juchao Yan, ENMU principal investigator, said in the report. “This DOE EPSCoR opportunity not only connects us and our own team together, but allows us to connect to and leverage several of the research infrastructures provided by the DOE at their laboratories free of charge, all for the advancement of science, technology, and engineering.”

Yan is partnering on the project with Dr. Sandra Biedron of UNM and Dr. Mara Talipov of NMSU. The project will prepare and characterize a class of polymers that incorporate a carbonyl.

“Modern research projects require collective efforts of research teams with complementary expertise,” Talipov said. “This project uses a combination of experimental, computational, and theoretical approaches to create a new angle of tackling challenging problems for the development of better solar cells. Interdisciplinary collaboration between the academic and national lab research teams builds an excellent environment for exciting research and for training of the next-generation STEM workforce.”

The studies are expected to create collaborations with members of the DOE labs and will utilize several facilities and additional research infrastructures at DOE labs, including Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

“The collaboration of the New Mexico Universities with these facilities and resources at the DOE labs is a testament to the collaborative nature of the DOE since its incubation period that started 80 years ago,” Biedron said. “Programs like the DOE EPSCoR reward collaborations and encourages the universities to work with the DOE laboratories and their resources for research and workforce training. It is an all-around winning program, including benefitting the EPSCoR states by bringing that information home. We are anxious to get the activities underway and contribute more to clean energy.”