Professor Jerry Mullin awarded 2nd NSF grant for research on fluorescent compounds

Jerry Mullin, Ph.D., professor of chemistry at the University of New England College of Arts and Sciences, is principle investigator on a grant recently funded by the National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation (NSF-MRI) program.

This is the second NSF grant awarded to Prof. Mullin's research team within the past year.

The grant for $115,000 will fund the acquisition of instrumentation capable of measuring the excited state lifetimes of fluorescent molecules on the time scale of tens of picoseconds (1 picosecond = 10-12 seconds). 

The new instrumentation will greatly enhance the collaborative research efforts of Dr. Mullin and colleagues at Bowdoin College and the University of Southern Maine. Co-investigators on the project are Professors Jeff Nagle (Bowdoin) and Hank Tracy and Jim Ford (USM).

Their collaborative research is aimed at broadening the understanding of the behavior of fluorescent chemical compounds.

Students from all three institutions will have access to the instrumentation for research and teaching.

In particular, students working with Drs. Mullin and Tracy on an NSF-funded project involving the synthesis and characterization of new compounds called metalloles, which show promise for use as organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) in display panels or in the construction of chemical sensors, will make extensive use of the new instrumentation.

The new instrument will be located in the Department of Chemistry and Physics' Analytical Instrument Laboratory at UNE's Biddeford Campus.