Abstract: The need for chemical and biosensors that quickly and reliably detect clinically important biological molecules and toxic chemicals has been rapidly increasing. However, developing such reliable sensors and sensor arrays remain a significant challenge especially given the difficulty in devising an effective label-free and sensitive detection strategy. Conjugated polymers (CPs) have become emerging materials for many useful applications due to their readily tunable properties by variation of chemical structure. Particularly the sensor application of CPs has gained much interest recently because CP-based sensors can provide large signal amplification. Our self-signaling optical sensors are designed to achieve high sensitivity by means of the energy harvesting property and highly emissive property of conjugated polymers. Receptors are rationally designed to provide specificity toward a target analyte to realize high selectivity. We have developed conjugated polymer-based optical sensory systems to detect various target molecules such as DNA, proteins, metal ions, influenza virus, antibiotics, prostate specific antigen, nerve agents, and melanine.^1-10 The concept, design principles, and applications of conjugated polymers for self-signaling sensors and sensor arrays will be discussed. Novel sensory systems based on emissive super-cooled liquids and metal-free purely organic phosphors will also be presented.

Bio: Jinsang Kim is Director of Macromolecular Science and Engineering, and a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering having a joint appointment in the Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Chemistry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He holds a M.S (1993) and a B.S. (1991) from Seoul National University, Korea, both in Fiber and Polymer Science. He earned his Ph.D. in 2001 in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT (Advisor Prof. Tim Swager), where he studied the design, synthesis, and assembly of conjugated sensory polymers and energy transport properties in controlled structures. He is also an expert in genetically engineered protein research. His postdoctoral work in this area at Caltech (Advisor Prof. David Tirrell) involved the expression of artificial genes to determine the extent to which artificial genetic information can be used to encode supramolecular assembly in macromolecular systems. He has won several prestigious awards including Monroe-Brown Foundation Research Excellent Award, NSF CAREER Award, Holt Award for excellent teaching, IUPAC Prize for Young Chemist, and the ACS ICI Award. He was also named one of the emerging investigators by the Journal of Materials Chemistry in 2007. His current research interests at the UM are plastic electronics, self-signal amplifying molecular biosensors, highly emissive organic emitters, and high performance polymers. His research has been sponsored by NSF BES, NSF ECS, NSF DMR, AFOSR, ARO, DoE, NIH, ACS, KIMM, KRF, QIA, Qatar NRF, Ford, Samsung, LG Chem, and Center for Chemical Genomics.

~BME Faculty Host: Chi Hwan Lee~

***Coffee and juice will be provided at West Lafayette***