Dr Mark Fox

Assistant Professor

Affiliations
Affiliation
Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry

Biography

Research Interests

We are principally interested in the fundamental synthetic, chemical and physical properties of luminescent compounds. They are characterised by spectroscopic (NMR, IR, UV-vis, MS, Raman), computational (DFT) and diffraction (X-ray) methods available from the excellent departmental research facilities here along with (spectro)electrochemical and photophysical measurements to explore their emission properties. Luminescent compounds of interest include ON/OFF photoswitches, phosphorescent metal complexes and thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) molecules.

Prompt fluorescence molecules

Compounds containing carboranes (stable clusters of boron, carbon and hydrogen) have intriguing photophysical properties. Some derivatives of ortho-carborane (1,2-C₂B₁₀H₁₂) have dual emissions where one emission is due to charge transfer (CT) or excimer/aggregation formation.

Chem. Commun., 2021, 57, 9466-9469 https://doi.org/10.1039/D1CC03248H

Chem. Sci., 2022, 13, 5205-5219 https://doi.org/10.1039/D1SC06867A

Nat. Commun., 2024, 15, 5205-5219  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47384-4

Phosphorescent complexes

Certain metal complexes are used as emitters in phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (PHOLEDs). Iridium complexes are shown to emit desirable blue colours and can be incorporated in PHOLEDs with high efficiencies.

Dalton Trans., 2020, 49, 2190-2208 https://doi.org/10.1039/C9DT04672K

Organometallics, 2022, 41, 2487-2493 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.organomet.2c00292

Inorg. Chem., 2023, 62, 2793-2805  https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c03934

Dalton Trans., 2024, 53, 17518-17524 https://doi.org/10.1039/D4DT02321H

Thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF)

TADF is a recent area of intense research as inexpensive organic compounds are exploited as suitable emitters in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) due to high efficiencies made possible by harvesting energy from both singlet and triplet states like in expensive iridium complexes.

Mater. Chem. Front., 2020, 4, 3602-3615 https://doi.org/10.1039/D0QM00429D

Chem. Mater., 2021, 33, 3066–3080 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.0c03783

J. Org. Chem., 2021, 86, 429–445 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.joc.0c02174

Chem. Mater., 2024, 36, 7135–7150  https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00850