What is Quaterrylene?
Quaterrylene is an aromatic hydrocarbon (essentially a small piece of graphene) with many applications in organic photovoltaics, organic thin-film transistors, and organic light emitting diodes due to its photophysical and semiconducting properties.
Despite the unique value of quaterrylene, the current availability of quaterrylene is limited. Existing methods of synthesizing quaterrylene are expensive, time consuming, and result in low yields. In addition, these methods are only suitable for small-scale reactions.
UNH’s Patent Pending, Innovative Process
Dr. Richard Johnson of the University of New Hampshire Chemistry Department and his former graduate student, Dr. Rajesh Thamatam, have developed a patent pending process to make economical and large-scale synthesis of quaterrylene a reality. Using a single step reaction, Drs. Johnson and Thamatam developed a scalable method of synthesizing terrylene and quaterrylene by reacting naphthalene and perylene in a Scholl type process, resulting in easily precipitated end-products.
Existing commercial sources offer quaterrylene in 10mg quantities for close to one thousand dollars. To date, our synthesis produces the compound on a gram scale using only hundreds of dollars worth of retail priced inputs.
Partner with Us and be a Leader in a Fast Growing Industry
We are looking to partner with a chemical manufacturing company to further develop and commercialize our patent pending process. Organic electronic materials is one of the fastest growing industries today, and the global market for graphene-based products, as well as printed, flexible, and organic electronics, is projected to expand rapidly over the next decade. UNH’s method for synthesizing quaterrylene could strategically position a chemical manufacturing company to become the foremost supplier of one of the keystone compounds of this growing industry.
For more information on this and other licensing or collaboration opportunities, please contact me at Tristan.carrier@unh.edu or 603-862-2022.
Tristan Carrier, Licensing Manager
UNHInnovation
