Richard Hildner receives NWO KLEIN funding through Science domain

Richard Hildner, associate professor optical spectroscopy of functional nanosystems at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials (Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Groningen,The Netherlands), has been awarded an NWO KLEIN grant for his proposal “Charge-transfer states in low-pandgap donor-acceptor copolymers - A fresh single-molecule perspective". KLEIN grants are intended for innovative, high-quality, fundamental research and/or studies involving matters of scientific urgency.

Hildner’s project will tackle the sustainable generation of energy and its efficient use as one of today’s biggest societal challenges. His work will focus on organic functional molecules as the basis of new devices that can help to address this challenge, e.g. in organic photovoltaics to produce electricity from sunlight or inorganic thermoelectric generators to recover energy from waste heat. He wants to study the electronic and optical properties of the newest generation of organic molecules, so-called conjugated donor-acceptor copolymers. He will use single-molecule spectroscopy to investigate one copolymer chain at a time and to understand these molecules on the smallest possible scale.

About the NWO Open Competition Domain Science-KLEIN

KLEIN grants are intended for realising curiosity-driven, fundamental research of high quality and/or scientific urgency. The KLEIN grant offers researchers the possibility to elaborate creative and risky ideas and to realise scientific innovations that can form the basis for the research themes of the future. There are three categories of KLEIN grants: KLEIN-1 (1 scientific position), KLEIN-2 (2 scientific positions in collaboration) and KLEIN-0 (investments) that are assessed in competition with each other.

The Board of the NWO Domain Science has approved a total of sixteen applications in the Open Competition Domain Science-KLEIN. See the full press release here: https://www.nwo.nl/en/news/sixteen-innovative-research-projects-launched-through-domain-science-klein-0

For more information contact Prof. Richard Hildner