Demet Asil Alptekin Research Group
MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY & DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY
Our group, dealing with the design and synthesis of functional organic and inorganic hybrid materials and various types of optoelectronic devices is located at Room B-41 in Chemistry Department.
Efforts are being made to design organic and inorganic hybrid structures that exhibit improved material functionality toward emissive materials, photovoltaic, sensing, data storage, nano-electronics and stimuli-responsive materials. Of particular interest are the nanocrystals as these materials offer a good strategy Read More ...
In addition to various solar cell device architectures, in our group, we are fabricating hybrid solar cells that contain layers of organic and inorganic based materials. Organic based materials such as pentacene is one of the special materials we use. It is capable Read More ...
The development of conjugated polyelectrolyte LECs represents a shift of complexity away from device fabrication and into the domain of chemical synthesis, allowing the deep well of synthesis knowledge to be drawn upon and applied to the creation of materials Read More ...
Chemiluminescent materials have been the subject of extensive research in the field of analytical chemistry due to their high sensitivity, high luminescence efficiency and simple instrumentation. Among these, luminol and derivatives that contain a pyridazine unit are the most attractive Read More ...
“Efforts are being made to design organic and inorganic hybrid structures that exhibit improved 
material functionality toward emissive materials, photovoltaic, sensing, data storage, nano-electronics and stimuli-responsive materials. Of particular interest are the synthetic polymers containing metal centers and nanocrystals as these materials offer a good strategy to construct low cost high performance optoelectronics and smart materials in the future.”
Demet Asil Alptekin, currently started as a lecturer in the Department of Chemistry, leading the Organic & Inorganic Hybrid Functional Materials Research Laboratory at Middle East Technical University. She got her B.Sc. degree on Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from Middle East Technical University in 2006. Later, she became research assistant at METU and conducted a study in the field of electroluminescent polymers during her master studies. Later, she was awarded by Higher Education Council of Turkey and METU to conduct her Ph.D. studies at University of Cambridge, Physics Department. She is also awarded by Schlumberger Company to become a Schlumberger Faculty for the Future Fellow.
Coming from a very interdisciplinary academic background, Dr. Asil’s research focuses broadly on the design and synthesis of hybrid functional materials for the construction of high performance and low cost future electronics. She recently conducted a study with Sir Richard H. Friend from University of Cambridge on the surface passivation techniques for the PbSe nanocrystals. They found that the effect of controlling the surface states of PbSe is crucial for the photovoltaic performance of singlet fission sensitized hybrid solar cells.
In collaboration with Professor Jonathan Nitschke from University of Cambridge, Chemistry Department, she studied in the field of self-assembled supramolecular chemistry and they announced the first type of copper containing metallo-polymer that can be applied to the light emitting diodes. The results also demonstrated that the heteroleptic metallo-polymers are capable of reconfiguring their structure and properties in response to stimuli, and they attributed these changes to the dynamic-covalent nature of the metal-ligand bonds.