Hometown: Ariccia, Italy

Year in School: Junior

Major: Chemistry and Physics

Project Abstract:

Europium-based luminescent complexes promise extensive potential applications in immunoassay technology, high throughput drug screening, and biomedical imaging.  They exhibit unique optical properties including sharp and well-defined emission peaks, long luminescent lifetimes enabling time-resolved detection, limited photobleaching, and large Stokes shifts. In this project, we have studied the structural and spectroscopic properties of a series of europium fluorobenzoic acid derivatives using density functional theory and time dependent density functional theory calculations.  The absorption maximum wavelength shows a blue shift upon fluorine substitution. Intersystem crossing and energy transfer gaps are sensitive to the number and the position of the fluorine atoms.  The optimum energy gaps resulting enhanced luminescent quantum yields were identified.  Correlation among the calculated energy gaps and the experimental luminescent quantum yields will be discussed. 

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Channa De Silva, Chemistry and Physics