This lecture will focus on the design of systems wherein reconfiguration of complex liquid emulsions (droplets) can be triggered chemically or biochemically.  The utility of these methods is to generate new transduction mechanisms by which chemical and biological sensors can be developed.  Complex liquid droplets behave as optical lens systems and small changes in surface tensions can change focal lengths or cause systems to switch between optically transmissive or scattering states.  Central to this scheme is that the fluids in the droplets have different densities and hence are aligned by the earth’s gravity.  The induced optical changes can be triggered with chemical, photochemical, or biochemical stimuli and thereby create new generations of sensors.  Demonstrations of these methods for the detection of enzyme concentrations and pathogens will be presented.   

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Timothy M. Swager is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry and the Director, Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A native of Montana, he received a BS from Montana State University in 1983 and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1988.  After a postdoctoral appointment at MIT he was on the chemistry faculty at the University of Pennsylvania 1990-1996 and returned to MIT in 1996 as a Professor of Chemistry and served as the Head of Chemistry from 2005-2010.  He has published more than 450 peer-reviewed papers and more than 90 issued/pending patents. Swager’s honors include: Election to the National Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Doctorate from Montana State University, The Pauling Medal, The Lemelson-MIT Award for Invention and Innovation, Election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The American Chemical Society Award for Creative Invention, The American Chemical Society Award in Polymer Chemistry, The Christopher Columbus Foundation Homeland Security Award, and The Carl S. Marvel Creative Polymer Chemistry Award (ACS).

Swager’s research interests are in design, synthesis, and study of organic-based electronic, sensory, high-strength and liquid crystalline materials. His liquid crystal designs demonstrated shape complementarity to generate specific interactions between molecules and includes fundamental mechanisms for increasing liquid crystal order by a new mechanism referred to as minimization of free volume. Swager’s research in electronic polymers has been mainly directed at the demonstration of new conceptual approaches to the construction of sensory materials. These methods are the basis of the FidoTM explosives detectors (FLIR Systems Inc), which have the highest sensitivity of any explosives sensor. Other areas actively investigated by the Swager group include radicals for dynamic nuclear polarization, applications of nano-carbon materials, organic photovoltaic materials, polymer actuators, and luminescent molecular probes for medical diagnostics. He is the cofounder of 3 companies and has served on a number of corporate and government boards.

Thermodynamics provides a robust conceptual framework and set of laws that govern the exchange of energy and matter.  Although these laws were originally articulated for macroscopic objects, it is hard to deny that nanoscale systems, as well, often exhibit “thermodynamic-like” behavior.  To what extent can the venerable laws of thermodynamics be scaled down to apply to individual microscopic systems, and what new features emerge at the nanoscale?  I will review recent progress toward answering these questions, with a focus on the second law of thermodynamics. I will argue that the inequalities ordinarily used to express the second law can be replaced by stronger equalities, known as fluctuation relations, which relate equilibrium properties to far-from-equilibrium fluctuations.  The discovery and experimental validation of these relations has stimulated interest in the feedback control of small systems, the closely related Maxwell demon paradox, and the interpretation of the thermodynamic arrow of time.  These developments have led to new tools for the analysis of non-equilibrium experiments and simulations, and they have refined our understanding of irreversibility and the second law.

Bio

Chris Jarzynski received an AB degree in physics from Princeton University in 1987, and a PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994. After postdoctoral positions at the University of Washington in Seattle and at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, he became a staff member in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos. In 2006, he moved to the University of Maryland, College Park, where he is now a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, with joint appointments in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Physics. His research is primarily in the area of nonequilibrium statistical physics, where he has contributed to an understanding of how the laws of thermodynamics apply to nanoscale systems. He has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, the 2005 Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences, and the 2019 Lars Onsager Prize in Theoretical Statistical Physics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Keynote speakers: 

• Antoine Kahn (Princeton University), "Chemical Doping in Organic Semiconductors"
• Ching Tang (University of Rochester), "OLED - The Next Generation Display Technology"
• Valy Vardeny (University of Utah), "Organic Spintronics"
• Vivian Wing-Wah Yam (University of Hong Kong), "Versatile Chromophoric Building Blocks - From Design to Supramolecular Assembly and Materials"

Participants at the Symposium have the opportunity to:

• Learn about cutting-edge research from world-renowned faculty members
• Learn about research and products being worked on at partner companies
• Meet top students and graduates who are prepared for the workforce
• Discuss emerging trends with recognized experts in the field
• Find knowledge and ideas to solve challenging problems
• Connect with global researchers and companies

View the Agenda.

The Symposium will take place at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center and lodging is available at the Renaissance Atlanta Midtown Hotel or other nearby hotels. 

About Georgia Tech-COPE

The Georgia Tech Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE) was established in 2003 with the objective to become a premier research and educational resource center. The focus on creating an ecosystem that would advance flexible organic photonic and electronic materials and devices and augment the educational experience for students and postdoctorals has resulted in numerous scientific achievements.

"Dynamic, Reversible and Hybrid Materials: Properties and Applications"

Dynamic systems that can undergo reversible processes are of great interest for the development of new materials, sensors, and biolabels. The talk will illustrate some of the recent results on soft structures based on metal complexes able to aggregate in fibers, gels and soft mechanochromic materials.  The use of platinum complexes as building block for luminescent reversible piezochromic and mechanochromic materials will be illustrated. The emission of the compounds can be tuned by an appropriate choice of the coordinated ligands as well as of their aggregation in different structures. The formation of soft assemblies allows the tuning of the emission color, by pressure and temperature leading to a new class of materials possessing reversible properties. Functional systems can also be created using inert or active nanocontainers such as microporous and mesoporous silica based nanoparticles. In particular examples using the crystalline allumino silicates, zeolite L, and mesoporous organosilicates will be discussed since these materials can act as nanocontainers and due to their biocompatibility used for biomedical applications. The different functionalization of their surface will be discussed, in particular with the aim to show that the particles can be decorated with different functional groups including biocompatible molecules and are able to perfom drug and DNA or RNA delivery inside the cell. The delivery can be probed by a kinetic analyses after the nanoparticles internalization. In particular using confocal fluorescent microscopy it is possible to follow the release of each single component as well as the positioning of the nanocontainers in real time and space. Such achievement allows us to study the fate of the different units and their release time. Also it will be shown how the molecules entrapped in the ordered channels can become active components. The alignment of electroactive molecules inside the narrow channels of a zeolite L, resulted in the formation of molecular wires. The molecular wire length is tunable between 30 and 100 nm and electrical measurements on the 1D assemblies were performed. Finally an ultra-high (> 2000%) room-temperature magnetoresistance was observed applying only a few mT. 

About Luisa De Cola

Since October 2012, De Cola is  professor at the University of Strasbourg (I.S.I.S.) as chair of Supramolecular and Bio-Material Chemistry, and part time scientist at the INT-KIT, Karlsruhe, Germany.

She was born in Messina, Italy, where she studied chemistry. After a post-doc in USA she moved back to Italy and in 1990 she was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna (Prof. V. Balzani group). In 1998 she moved as Full Professor to the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2004 she accepted a call from the University of Muenster as full professor in chemistry and physics. She has received several awards, the most recent being the ERC advanced grant (2009), the IUPAC award as one of the Distinguished Women in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (2011), the Gutenberg chair award (2012). She was elected as member of the Academia Europeae in 2012.

Her main interests are luminescent and electroluminescent molecules and their assemblies for the creation of novel materials and porous structures for bio-applications. 

"Recent Progress in Organic Solar Cells: From a Lab Curiosity to a Serious Photovoltaic Technology"

Carbon-based organic semiconductors have many potential advantages like easy large-area preparation on flexible substrates, large variety of materials, and low cost. Although known for a century, organics have achieved little impact until OLED displays entered the market about a decade ago, demonstrating that organic semiconductors are ready for significant commercial markets.

In contrast to light-emitting devices, organic solar cells have so far achieved little commercial impact due to low efficiency and lifetime. However, organic solar cells have recently achieved significant progress and have crossed the 10% efficiency mark. For a broad application, further significant improvements are needed.

This talk overviews the key features of solid-state organic solar cells and recent developments in the field. One central research area is the design of the bulk heterojunction active layer, requiring a nanoscale phase separation and optimized morphology to achieve efficient operation. A key challenge of the field is to find design rules which relate the molecular structure of absorber materials to layer morphology and cell properties. The difficulty is that small changes of the molecular structure, leaving the electronic properties of the individual molecule nearly unchanged, can lead to large changes in the crystal packing and molecular orientation, causing significant differences in the electronic properties in the active layer. Furthermore, I will discuss highly efficient tandem structures with optimized electrical and optical properties. Very efficient recombination contacts can be realized by n- and p-type doped transport layers. Structures based on these approaches have reached efficiencies of 12% and have the potential to reach approximately 20%. Furthermore, these high-efficiency cells also show encouraging lifetimes.

About Karl Leo

Karl Leo obtained the Diplomphysiker degree from the University of Freiburg in 1985, working with Adolf Goetzberger at the Fraunhofer-Institut für Solare Energiesysteme. In 1988, he obtained the PhD degree from the University of Stuttgart for a PhD thesis performed at the Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung in Stuttgart under supervision of Hans Queisser. From 1989 to 1991, he was postdoc at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, NJ, U.S.A. From 1991 to 1993, he was with the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) in Aachen, Germany. Since 1993, he is full professor of optoelectronics at the Technische Universität Dresden, until 2013, he has been also working at the Fraunhofer-Institution for Organics, Materials and Electronic Devices COMEDD. His main interests are novel semiconductor systems like semiconducting organic thin films; with special emphasis to understand basics device principles and the optical response. His work was recognized by the following awards: Otto-Hahn-Medaille (1989), Bennigsen-Förder-Preis (1991), Leibniz-Award (2002), award of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy (2002), Manfred-von-Ardenne-Preis (2006), and Zukunftspreis of the German president (2011). He is cofounder of several companies, including Novaled AG and Heliatek GmbH.

Recent control of the transport properties in polymers has encouraged the development of polymer thermoelectric (TE) devices. Polymer TEs are thought to be less expensive and more scalable than their inorganic counterparts and recent ZT improvements suggest that polymers may be a low cost alternative for low temperature thermoelectric power generation.  The principle arguments is that a low cost, low efficiency TE generator may be preferred over a traditional, higher efficiency, high cost TE generator given the overabundance of low quality heat sources.  The central challenge is then in designing a low cost solution that can be widely deployed to convert the low quality heat into electricity.  To that end a detailed study of the material and manufacturing costs of existing TE options was conducted to evaluate the maturity of existing TE solutions. The design framework that allows for minimizing the $/W, suggests that polymers may be an ideal solution but require that the TE generator geometry be reinvented.  The low thermal conductivity and low costs associated with polymers suggests that the cost optimized system will have a very different geometry than traditional TE devices.  Logically following that suggestion to its conclusion, leads us to (i) custom, large area, screen printed, polymer thin film devices and to (ii) rapidly parallelizable, radially stacked, polymer thin film devices.  This seminar will introduce thermoelectric power generation and walk through the cost considerations and design constraints of TE generator costing <$1/W.  The cost-performance trade-offs will be discussed and it will be shown how polymers are uniquely situated for this application. 

About Shannon Yee

Shannon Yee is an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering since the fall semester of 2013 and recently became a member of Georgia Tech – COPE.

Dr. Yee graduated with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (2007) and then an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering (2008) from The Ohio State University. He was a Department of Energy Advanced Fuel Cell Cycle Initiative Fellow (2007) and was also awarded prestigious the Hertz Fellowship (2008) to support his research in energy. Dr. Yee graduated with a Ph.D. (2013) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California Berkley. During that time, he assisted in forming the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) as it’s first Fellow. 

In 1993, we developed white-light-emitting OLEDs for the first time. Since then, the performance of white OLEDs has steadily improved and, today, they are considered to be the light source of the next generation. OLED displays based on white OLEDs have also been developed and large-size displays have been commercialized. Recently, high quantum efficiencies (QEs) are obtained by using phosphorescent emitters such as iridium complexes. External QE of 25—30% was achieved for blue, green and red OLEDs, which correspond to the internal QE of nearly 100%. Device lifetime at high luminance levels, which is required for general lighting, is significantly improved by using the multiphoton structure. By combining the above techniques, OLEDs can be extremely efficient and possess extremely long lifetime, even at high luminance level. In 2010, Lumiotec Inc. has started small-scale production of white OLED panels in Yonezawa, and luminaires using their panels have been commercialized.  In this talk, recent progress in white OLEDs will be discussed.

About Junji Kido

Junji Kido was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1959. He received his B.S. degree in applied chemistry from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1984 and the M.S. and Ph. D. degrees in polymer chemistry from Polytechnic University, New York, in 1987 and 1989, respectively.

In 1989, he joined the department of polymer chemistry in Yamagata University in Japan as an assistant professor and promoted to an associate professor in 1995, and to a full professor in 2002. 

His work has been recognized by awards from the Society of Polymer Science, Japan, (Society Award), and the Society for Information Display, U.S.A. (Special Recognition Award and Fellow Award) in 2002 and in 2008.  He also received the Herman F. Mark Technology Medal from Polytechnic University (2007) and the Medal with Purple Ribbon from Japanese Emperor (2013).

Confirmed Speakers

• Professor Valerie Ashby, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Professor Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Professor Zhiqun Lin, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Professor Khalid Salaita, Emory University
• Professor Kenneth Sandhage, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Professor Natalie Stingelin, Imperial College London
• Professor Gleb Yushin, Georgia Institute of Technology

Registration

To find out more and register your interest in this symposium, please visit the event webpage.

About Materials Horizons 

Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (a not-for-profit Publisher), Materials Horizons is a premier journal publishing first reports of exceptional significance across the breadth of materials research. The journal features research at the cutting-edge interface of materials science with chemistry, physics, biology and engineering. It is an innovative, community-focused, dynamic journal guided by world-renowned Editorial Board members.

• Thomas Bougher, ME, "Thermal Transport in Chain-oriented Amorphous Polymers", (Advisor: Baratunde Cola)
• Caroline Grand, Chemistry, "Tuning Solubility of Isoindigo Polymers to Control Thin Film Morphology in Organic Photovoltaics", (Advisor: John Reynolds)
• Nabil Kleinhenz, ChBE, "Employing Liquid Crystal Phases for Enhanced Semiconducting Polymer Morphologies for Organic Solar Cell and Transistor Applications", (Advisor: Elsa Reichmanis) 
• Keith Knauer, ECE, "The Operational Lifetime of Inverted Top-Emitting Organic Light-Emitting Diodes", (Advisor: Bernard Kippelen)

Refreshments will be served.

Refreshments will be served.

ABSTRACT

On the way to the design of a new molecule for possible ambipolar organic field effect transistors, we discovered a crystal-­to-­crystal, essentially quantitative, monomer to polymer transformation. The crystalline polymer had the further interesting property of full exfoliation making it possible to isolate and observe a single polymer molecule. We further discovered preparation and X-­ray crystallographic characterization of the first crystalline homoatomic polymer chain as part of a semiconducting pyrroloperylene-­iodine complex. The crystal structure contains infinite polyiodideI I_∞^δ-­‐ and close similarities in the low-­wavenumber Raman spectra of the title compound and starch-­iodine complex suggest such infinite chains of polyiodide in the latter as well. The structure of iodine within the insoluble, blue starch-­iodine complex has remained elusive since the phenomenon was first observed over two centuries ago, and has since generated much speculation as to how iodine arranges within this complex. This includes suggestions of infinite polymeric iodine chains stabilized by amylose sugars.

BIO

Professor Fred Wudl, Research Professor of Chemistry and Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), received his B.S. (1964) and Ph.D. (1967) degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where his dissertation work was done with Professor Donald J. Cram. 

Interface structure and the quantitative composition of morphology are known to be critical for fullerene based bulk heterojunction solar cells, yet have been very difficult to study previously due to a paucity of characterization methods. Recently developed soft X-ray microscopy and scattering tools provide new avenues and contribute substantially to indentify the number of phases present and to provide a quantitative measurement of their composition fluctuations and size distribution. This led to the realization that mixed domains are prevalent in OPVs and rather than just being detrimental can have important beneficial contributions for charge generation and charge transport. Furthermore, polarized x-ray scattering can reveal preferential orientation of the donor polymer (edge-on or face-on) relative to the fullerene aggregate interface. Such ordering has previously not been observed nor controlled in fullerene-based solar cells and is shown here to be a critical factor for high performance in a number of systems.

About Harald Ade

Dr. Ade holds appointments at NCSU since 1992 (Assist. Professor 1992-97, Assoc. Prof. 1997-2001, Prof. since 2001). He received his Ph.D. in 1990 in Physics from SUNY at Stony Brook and had joined the NCSU faculty in 1992. H. Ade received the K. F. J. Heinrich Award of the Microbeam Analysis Society (2000), a DuPont Young Faculty Award (1994-97) and an NSF Young Investigator Award (1994-1999). He was also recognized by a Sigma Xi Award of the NCSU Sigma Xi Chapter (1995) and an R&D100 Award (1990). He has delivered more than 200 invited presentations and (co)-authored over 155 research papers. He is a Fellow of the APS and AAAS and has an h-factor of 39 and a steeply raising citation rate.

Carbon nanotube networks represent a powerful platform for the generation of chemiresistive sensors. Through the selective chemical functionalization with selector molecules and/or receptors, the conductance can be made selective to the presence of analytes ranging from large biological macromolecules to small gaseous molecules. This lecture will detail the fabrication of robust sensors using new functionalization chemistry to impart selectivity to the carbon nanotubes and methods to minimize drift that is often inherent in resistivity-based sensing schemes.  Sensor arrays with low levels of cross-reactivity between sensor elements will be discussed for the robust classification of chemicals. The use of carbon nanotube-based gas sensors for the detection of ethylene and other gases relevant to the monitoring fruit and produce ripeness will be presented. Gas sensors for agricultural and food production/storage/transportation are being specifically targeted and can be used to create systems that increase production, manage inventories, and minimize losses.

About Timothy Swager

Timothy M. Swager is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A native of Montana, he received a BS from Montana State University in 1983 and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1988. After a postdoctoral appointment at MIT he was on the chemistry faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and returned to MIT in of 1996 as a Professor of Chemistry and served as the Head of Chemistry from 2005-2010. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and more than 50 issued/pending patents. Swager’s honors include: The John Scott Award, Election to the National Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Doctorate from Montana State University, the Lemelson-MIT Award for Invention and Innovation, Election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Christopher Columbus Foundation Homeland Security Award, and The Carl S. Marvel Creative Polymer Chemistry Award (ACS).

Swager’s research interests are in design, synthesis, and study of organic-based electronic, sensory, high-strength and liquid crystalline materials. His liquid crystal designs demonstrated shape complementarity to generate specific interactions between molecules and includes fundamental mechanisms for increasing liquid crystal order by a new mechanism referred to as minimization of free volume. Swager’s research in electronic polymers has been mainly directed at the demonstration of new conceptual approaches to the construction of sensory materials. These methods are the basis of the Fido^TM explosives detectors (FLIR Systems Inc), which have the highest sensitivity of any explosives sensor.   Other areas actively investigated by the Swager group include radicals for dynamic nuclear polarization, applications of nano-carbon materials, organic photovoltaic materials, polymer actuators, and luminescent molecular probes for medical diagnostics. He is the cofounder of 3 companies and has served on a number of corporate and government boards.

In this seminar I will present three main areas of our work on solution processed solar cells. In part one I will describe the development of new donor and acceptor materials for solution processed organic photovoltaics (OPVs). In particular, I will discuss the issue of molecular association with regards to small molecule donor materials and its effect on the open circuit voltage. I will also introduce a new class of small molecule semiconductors based on solubilised indene derivatives and their use as acceptor materials in solution processed bulk heterojunction OPVs. In part two, I will describe our work on large scale printing of organic solar cells. Finally, in part three, I will present our work on the fabrication of thin film solar cells based on nanocrystal inks of CdTe. We have shown that totally solution processable solar cells can be fabricated in air at temperatures as low as 300 °C. Focusing on a CdTe/ZnO thin-film system, we report solar cells that achieve power conversion efficiencies of upto 10% with greater than 90% internal quantum efficiency. 

About Scott Watkins

Dr. Scott Watkins is the Stream Leader for Thin Film Photovoltaics in CSIRO’s Future Manufacturing Flagship and is based in the Division of Materials Science and Engineering, Melbourne, Victoria. Scott has a PhD in Chemistry from UNSW and has developed research interests which span the synthesis and analysis of new materials through to the fabrication and testing of devices. Between 2000 and 2004 Scott worked with Cambridge Display Technologies in the UK on the development of light-emitting polymers and metal complexes for display and lighting applications. Scott joined CSIRO in 2004 to work on materials and applications in the field of flexible electronics. At CSIRO Scott has led projects on both OLEDs and OPVs and coordinates CSIRO’s involvement in a number of national and international consortia aimed at developing applications of flexible electronics by linking industry with research. Scott is representing CSIRO in the newly formed Australia-US Institute for Advanced Photovoltaics (AUSIAPV), of which Georgia Institute of Technology is a partner.

• Yungsang Kim, MSE (Advisor: Joseph Perry), "High Energy Density Sol-gel Thin Film Capacitor"
• Rebecca Giesking, Chemistry (Advisor: Jean-Luc Brédas), "Cyanine Derivatives for All-Optical Switching: A Theoretical Investigation of Chemical Structure Effects on the Excited State Transition Dipole Moments"
• James June, ECE (Advisor: Bernard Kippelen), "Manipulating Laser Pulses: From Design to Application of Metal Thin-Film Structure"
• Ehsan Najafabadi, ECE (Advisor: Bernard Kippelen), "Inverted Top-Emitting Organic Light-Emitting Diodes"

Refreshments will be served.

Abstract

The extent to which the optoelectronic properties of molecules are controlled by their conformation and packing is now well appreciated. In particular, the planarity (or nonplanarity) of a molecule has a dramatic influence on its behavior, and hence on its potential application. In the context of light emission, disorder can be beneficial in controlling aggregation, but for photovoltaics and transistors where low energy absorption and effective charge transport are key issues, planar molecules are preferable. Of particular relevance to this talk is the development of planarised conjugated architectures that should support much-enhanced charge transport properties as a result of their ability to self-assemble into tightly packed frameworks.

For example, compound 1 (m = 10^-2 cm² V^-1 s^-1) orders into a 3-dimensional network of close contacts both in crystalline form and as a thin film. This high level of self-assembly is achieved through p-p stacking in 2D and non-covalent interactions between the S and N atoms of adjacent molecules in the third. The nature of these interactions is not entirely clear, but one possible source of an attractive potential is a 3c-2e interaction between lone pairs and relatively low-lying antibonding orbitals, although these are likely to be counteracted to some extent by significant lone pair-lone pair repulsions. The 3D nature of the material represents a unique motif for highly efficient charge transport. A second example, polymer 2 (m = 10^-3 cm² V^-1 s^-1), has a planar repeat unit in the solid state as a result of close intramolecular sulfur/fluorine and hydrogen/fluorine contacts. Interestingly, variations in the absorption spectrum of these molecules suggest that the band gap is very sensitive to the degree of planarity. Whilst the mobility values for 1 and 2 are modest, the importance of the work is that it establishes a principle for the rational design of second generation materials with enhanced charge-transport properties.

This lecture will discuss several further examples that underline the importance and influence of non-covalent interaction in organic semiconductors.

Organic nanowires may provide insights into the fundamental processes of charge generation and transport in organic semiconductors under nanoscopic confinement. Here, we demonstrate how a simple molecular design results in nanowires with defined lateral dimensions that comprised a single stack of tightly π–π stacked chromophores at their core. Moreover, we prepared well-defined microfibers that exhibited hierarchical structure formation with a remarkably high degree of internal order and enabled us to obtain detailed structural information on all length scales with molecular level precision. The nanowires and microfibers nanowires showed light-induced formation of radical cations that behaved like positive polaron charge carriers. The nanofibrils were semiconducting, showed space-charge injection-limited conductivity behavior, and exhibited photo-current generation, relating their macroscopic electric properties to the spectroscopically characterized charge carriers. Our results, thus, provide an example of a universal organic nanowire model system that successfully links molecular design, well-defined supramolecular structure formation, charge carrier generation, and finally macroscopic charge transport.

About Holger Frauenrath

Holger Frauenrath studied chemistry at RWTH Aachen, Germany from 1992 to 1997, with a focus on synthetic organic chemistry. He performed his PhD thesis from 1998 to 2001 in the research group of Prof Hartwig Höcker at RWTH Aachen, working on a project related to the stereospecific polymerization of methacrylates as well as their copolymerization with olefins using zirconocene catalysts. Afterwards, he joined the group of Prof. Sam Stupp at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA, as a postdoctoral fellow supported by a Feodor Lynen fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His postdoctoral research projects were centered around the supramolecular self-assembly of rod-coil molecules. After his return to Germany in 2003, he started to build his own research group at FU Berlin, funded with an Emmy Noether Grant from the German Science Foundation. In 2005, the research group moved to the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where Holger Frauenrath obtained his Habilitation in 2009. In the same year, he was appointed as a tenure-track assistant professor at the Institute of Materials (IMX) of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, building the new Laboratory of Macromolecular and Organic Materials (LMOM). Holger Frauenrath has won several awards, including the Raimund Stadler Award of the Germany Chemical Society (GdCh), and a European Research Council (ERC) grant.

• O'Neil Smith, Understanding the Impact of the Structure of Surface Modifiers on the Dielectric Performance of Nanocomposite Thin Films  
• James Hsu, Noble Metal Nonlinear Optical Mirrors
• Yungsang Kim, High Energy Density Sol-gel Thin Film Capacitor
• Ehsan Najafabadi, Highly Efficient Inverted Top-Emitting Phosphorescent OLEDs on Glass and Flexible Substrates

About the Georgia Tech-COPE Graduate Seminar Series

The Georgia Tech-COPE Graduate Seminar Series is a student-organized event where graduate students can present their ongoing research, improve their presentation skills, and receive feedback.  It provides a non-threatening environment in which students give short talks followed by questions and discussion.  The format of the meeting allows for 4 students to present their research.  A reception after the meeting provides an opportunity for networking with other students. 

The goals of the seminar series:

• Provide a venue for graduate students to present their research prior to conferences or defense
• Provide a forum for students to gain experience presenting their work
• Encourage collaboration among students

The series is a monthly event featuring organic photonics and electronics related research presentations.  Students interested in giving a presentation must submit a title, abstract and photo by e-mail to Sharon Lawrence at least 1 month prior to the event.

Abstract

In the past decade, significant progress has been made in the fabrication of organic semiconductor thin-film devices predominantly due to important improvements of existing materials and the creation of a wealth of novel compounds. Many challenges, however, still exist. Key to commercial success is to make it technological practice to exploit the touted potential for low-cost manufacturing of these functional materials. This requires intimate knowledge of relevant structure/processing/performance interrelations. Here, examples are given of how materials scientists ‘tools’ may be utilized to gain further understanding of this interesting class of materials and how the physical organization, from the molecular to the macroscale of functional organic matter such as polymer semiconductors can can be controlled. To this end, we present a survey on the principles of structure development from the liquid phase of this materials family with focus on how to manipulate their phase transformations and solid-state order to tailor and tune the final ‘morphology’ towards technological and practical applications.

Dr. Adachi received his PhD from Kyushu University in 1991. In 2005 he was appointed Full Professor at the Center for Future Chemistry at Kyushu University.  Since 2010 he is director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics Research (OPERA) and he serves on the editorial board of Organic Electronics (Elsevier). His current research interests are in organic opto-electronics such as OLEDs, organic FETs, organic solar cells, organic laser diodes and fundamental photo-physical and electronic processes in organic solid-state thin films.

Materials Design for Highly Efficient Delayed Fluorescence

Although typical organic molecules are simply composed of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N) and oxygen (O) atoms, carbon’s unique bonding manners based on sp³, sp² and sp hybrid orbitals enable very complicated molecular architectures, leading to amazing functions in a wide variety of creatures and industrial products. In the last two decades, the allure of unlimited freedom of design with organic molecules has shifted a significant part of the research effort on electronics from inorganic into organic materials. In particular, great progress has been achieved in the development of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). The successive progress of 1st generation OLEDs using fluorescent molecules and 2nd generation OLEDs using phosphorescent molecules solidified organic materials as a very attractive system for practical electronics.

In this study, we designed new advanced electroluminescent (EL) molecules composed of only conventional CHN atoms without any precious metals. With proper molecular design, the energy gap between the two excited states, i.e., singlet (S₁) and triplet (T₁) excited states, are minimized, promoting very efficient spin up-conversion from T₁ to S₁ states (reverse intersystem crossing (ISC)) while maintaining a rather high radiative decay rate of >10⁶/s, leading to a very high fluorescence efficiency. Using these unique molecules, we realized a very high external EL efficiency that is comparable with those of high-efficiency phosphorescence-based OLEDs. Thus, these molecules harvest both singlet and triplet excitons for light emission under electrical excitation through fluorescence decay channels. Most recently, we designed a various kind of organic light-emitting materials demonstrating intense delayed fluorescence. Even though molecules have a small energy gap between singlet and triplet excited states, we succeeded for maintaining rather high radiative decay rate, i.e., high emission efficiency. In particular, 4CzIPN showed nearly 100% internal electroluminescence efficiency, indicating delayed fluorescence is a promising pathway for converting electrically generated excitons into photons. 

This year's symposium will gather around 150 people from the academic world and from companies active in the field of OLEDs, printed transistors, and OPV.

The academic speakers will include: Chihaya Adachi (Kyushu University); Ana Claudia Arias (University of California, Berkeley); George Hadziioannou (Université de Bordeaux); Lionel Hirsch (Université de Bordeaux); Thuc-Quyen Nguyen (University of California, Santa Barbara); as well as Bernard Kippelen, Seth Marder, and Jean-Luc Bredas (Georgia Tech-COPE).

Industry will be represented by speakers from companies that include: AGC Glass Europe, CPI PETEC, GE Lighting, ISORG, Plextronics, Polyera, Solvay, and Universal Display Corporation.

While free, registration is required and by invitation only. There will be a limit on the number of attendees.

Fluorescent and phosphorescent organic/organometallic materials are receiving intense interest as emitters in electroluminescent organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) for displays and solid-state lighting (SSL).

The background concepts will be briefly described before a presentation of recent work in the Durham labs. Topics will include the design, synthesis, photophysical properties and OLED performance of fluorescent copolymers, and phosphorescent Ir(III) complexes. Color tuning of emission, including efficient white light emission will be reported.

Phosphorescent device efficiencies as high as 40 cd/A with external quantum efficiencies of 12% for green emission have been achieved in simple solution-processed device architectures. RSVP

About Martin Bryce

Martin Bryce was born near Birmingham, UK and graduated from Wolverhampton Polytechnic (B.Sc. 1st class). He completed a D.Phil. at York University under the guidance of John Vernon and Peter Hanson in 1978. Following postdoctoral appointments at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (with Larry Weiler) and the University of Bristol (with Roger Alder) he joined Durham University. He was promoted to Professor of Chemistry in 1995. He is the recipient of the Ciba-Geigy Award for academic collaboration in Europe (1990), the Royal Society of Chemistry Bader Award (1992), the Royal Society of Chemistry Interdisciplinary Award (1992), the Nuffield Foundation Science Research Fellowship (1993), the University of Durham Sir Derman Christopherson Fellowship (1995) and the Royal Society of Chemistry Heterocyclic Chemistry Award (2002). Martin has held Visiting Scientist positions at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Copenhagen. He was a Troisième Cycle Lecturer at several universities in Switzerland in 2008. Since 1990 he has been the co-director of the Durham University Centre for Molecular and Nanoscale Electronics. He was the Scientific Editor of the Journal of Materials Chemistry (1995-2000). Martin is the coordinator of the EC FP7 Marie Curie ITN “Fundamentals of Molecular Electronic Assemblies” (FUNMOLS) (2008-2012) comprising 10 European partner laboratories. 

Novel Photonics Polymers for Face-to-Face Communication

Recent progress and status of photonics polymers for overwhelmingly realistic face-to-face communication are described. When the world’s fastest graded-index plastic optical fiber (with a 40gbps bandwidth) is directly connected to a large size display, a high realistic sensation is achieved without any time lag. A 3D/4K display has been successfully fabricated from a highly scattering optical transmission polymer, which increases the brightness and contrast. The display is based on the invention of a zero-birefringence polymer that dramatically improves the control of the polarization phase and removes the “mura” (unevenness) problem at low fabrication cost. The key technology is the use of photonics polymers that will totally change today’s communication systems.

About Franky So

Dr. Franky So received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California in 1991. He was the Manager of the OLED Program at the Motorola Corporate Research Laboratories and then the Head of Research at OSRAM Opto Semiconductors responsible for the OLED development. He joined the University of Florida in 2005 and is currently the Rolf E. Hummel Professor of Electronic Materials, a University of Florida Research Foundation Professor and the Associate Chair of Research in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Dr. So is a Chartered Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the Optical Society of America (OSA), and the International Society of Optics and Photonics (SPIE). His research interest is in the area of organic light emitting diodes, organic solar cells, infrared sensors and radiation detectors. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Materials Science and Engineering Reports and also an Associate Editor of IEEE Journal of Display Technology, IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, SPIE Journal of Photonics for Energy. Dr. So has edited one book and is an author of 3 book chapters. He has over 100 refereed publications, 70 issued patents and another 20 patent applications.

Dr. So received many awards and recognitions. While at Motorola, he was given the Distinguished Innovator and the Master Innovator Awards. At the University of Florida, he was given the Innovation Award, the MSE Department Faculty Excellence Award. In 2011, he was named the University of Florida Research Foundation Professor. Dr. So was also an recipient of the DOE Solid State Lighting Significant Achievement Award in 2009 and 2010.

Abstract

Energetic Disorder and Carrier Transport in Photovoltaic Polymers

Solution processable polymeric solar cells have drawn a lot of attention due to their potential for low cost roll-to-roll manufacturing. Compared with inorganic semiconductors, polymer semiconductors have relatively low carrier mobilities and therefore carrier transport is considered a limiting factor determining the performance of a polymer solar cell. In addition to carrier mobility, carrier lifetime in the polymer:fullerene blends is another important parameter determining the cell efficiency. We have extensively studied the carrier transport and recombination properties of several donor-acceptor conjugated polymers. We found that while low mobilities in polymers lead to charge imbalance, high mobilities do not always lead to high power conversion efficiencies. In this presentation, we will present our device results based on dioctyldithieno silole (DTS) polymers with a wide-absorption band and excellent transport properties. Even though the DTS polymers have a high hole mobility, the power conversion efficiency of the resulting solar cells is limited by the low fill factor. In order to study the loss mechanism of the photo-current, we carried out transient photo-voltage (TPV) measurements to probe the bimolecular recombination of photo-carriers under open circuit condition. Based on our photo-CELIV (carrier extraction by linearly increasing voltage) data, we found that the carrier recombination rate is strongly related to the energetic disorder of the semiconductor polymers. Finally, we will report on our recent progress of high efficiency polymer solar cells based on a low band-gap polymer having an alternating dithienogermole-thienopyrrolodione repeat unit (PDTG-TPD).

The optimization of charge carrier injection and transport is of crucial importance for today’s and future organic electronic applications as Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic photovoltaic devices (OPV). Novaled has established over the last decade the conductivity doping approach as one main method to lower operating voltage and increase power efficiency in OLEDs.

For OLED display applications our work has been focused in the last years on further development of charge carrier transport and doping materials to enhance the crucial blue pixel performance, especially for top emission OLEDs. By the use of the doping technology the performance triangle of Voltage, Efficiency, and Lifetime can be optimized in respect to detailed customer demands.

Another market area for OLEDs is OLED lighting, where a maximum power efficiency is of utmost importance. Since the operating voltage of white PIN-OLEDs is already low at around 3V lately focus was given on further enhancing the out-coupling efficiency of large area flat OLEDs. We developed new organic optical outcoupling enhancement material that can be incorporated in an existing OLED stack without negative impact on device yield. This new material allows scaling of the OLED area and out-coupling effects since it can be deposited by normal large area vacuum coating technologies.

Thirdly such doped charge carrier transport layers can be used in OPV devices, allowing stacking of absorber units and optimizing optical effects inside the OPV stack.

Last but not least doping materials and technology can be used in electronic devices, as organic transistors and diodes.

RSVP (required)

Participants at Industry Partners' Day have the opportunity to:

• Learn about cutting-edge research from world-renowned faculty members
• Learn about research and products being worked on at partner companies
• Meet top students and graduates who are prepared for the workforce
• Discuss emerging trends with recognized experts in the field
• Find knowledge and ideas to solve challenging problems
• Connect with global researchers and companies
• Visit state-of-the-art research facilities for research on organic photonics and electronics

Learn More and Register to Attend

Transparent display based on OLEDs is a strong candidate for pervasive displays in the near future. However, transparent OLEDs have a several weak points such as efficiency, reliability, visibility, and transparency. In particular, the efficiency of transparent OLEDs is a critical issue because light emission is going through both the top and bottom side of OLEDs. When we look into the light loss mechanism in OLEDs, surface plasmon and waveguide loss are most serious problems. In this talk, how to reduce the surface plasmon and waveguide loss is suggested and discussed. The irregular hole injection layer in transparent OLEDs was fabricated by use of colloidal lithography. The light extraction efficiency of transparent was improved due to Bragg scattering of waveguide modes and surface plasmon polaritons, and the operating voltage was also decreased. As a result, the external quantum efficiency and the power efficiency of transparent OLEDs were increased as compared with those of conventional transparent organic light emitting diodes without irregular hole injection layer. The angular dependence of emission characteristics was investigated by measuring radiant intensity profiles for emission angles and azimuthal angles.

About Professor Choi

Kyung Cheol Choi received the B.S. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul Korea, in 1986, and the M.S. degree and Ph.D. degree in plasma engineering from Seoul National University in 1988 and 1993, respectively.

From 1993 to 1999, he was involved with researching and developing display devices at the Institute for Advanced Engineering, Spectron Corporation of America, and Hyundai Electronics Industries. From 2000 to 2004, he was an Associate Professor with the Department of Electronics Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul. He was also in charge of the Information Display Research Center supported by the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication. Since February 1, 2005, he has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, Korea, where he was first an Associate Professor and is currently a KAIST Chair Professor. Since September 2007, he has been in charge of the Center for Advanced Flexible Display Convergence supported by the Korean Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology. He has also been in charge of LG Display –KAIST Cooperation center since 2010. His research interests include flexible and transparent displays, organic light-emitting diodes, plasma display panels, and surface plasmon applications for displays.

Dr. Choi is a member of the Society for Information Display, and the Korean Information Display Society. He had been an Associate Editor of IEEE/OSA Journal of Display Technology from 2005 to 2010.

While the seminar is free, we do ask you to please RSVP here.  

Present social and economic demands on energy sources are driving fundamental science and engineering research into alternative energy technologies. Our research focuses on combined experimental and efficient computational exploration of organic photovoltaics and piezoelectrics. We seek to find optimum or nearly-optimum materials properties through a combination of inverse design, genetic algorithms, and automated electronic structure calculations, combined with experimental synthesis and verification. With polymer solar cells, we have used a multi-objective genetic algorithm to uncover new design rules for highly-efficient targets. We also explore the charge transport in realistic, imperfect organic semiconductors to find design rules connecting nanoscale morphology with predicted current-voltage response. In piezoelectric materials, we have pioneered a new approach, using conformational distortions of individual molecules in an applied electric field to drive a “bottom-up” distortion, with greater piezo response than many conventional inorganics.

About Professor Hutchison

Geoff grew up in upstate New York and attended Williams College for undergrad. His Ph.D. is from Northwestern University, where he worked on rational design of transparent and conducting polymers. His postdoctoral research at Cornell University focused on single-molecule wires and novel cathodes for lithium-ion batteries.

While the seminar is free, we do ask you to please RSVP here.  

While the event is free, please take a moment to RSVP here.

Robert Street received a physics BA and PhD from Cambridge University. After working at Sheffield University and the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, he joined the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (now Palo Alto Research Center Inc.) in California, where he is now a Senior Research Fellow. His research concentrates on large area electronics, including hydrogenated amorphous silicon, large area image sensor arrays for x-ray medical imaging and more recently, organic semiconductors and flexible electronics. He is a fellow of the APS and MRS and was awarded the APS Adler Award in 1992 and the 2010 AIP award for the Industrial Applications of Physics.

"Disorder Effects in the Electronic Properties of Organic Solar Cells"

Bulk heterojunction organic solar cells have a complex physical structure made up of nanoscale domains of donors and acceptors, each of which is a disordered material. Understanding the electronic properties has proved controversial, with several competing models of transport and recombination. The talk will focus on the role of localized electronic states introduced by the disorder or by impurities. Disorder introduces exponential band tails and deep traps in the electronic structure and experiments show that these play a central role in the electronic transport and recombination mechanisms. Trap creation induced by irradiation is also shown to cause degradation of some solar cells.

• Boyi Fu, ChBE (Advisor: Elsa Reichmanis), "Molecular Design, Synthesis, and Characterization of Benzothiadiazole-oligothiophene Based Low Bandgap Donor-Acceptor (D-A) Copolymers"
• Laxman Pandey, Chemistry (Advisor: Jean-Luc Brédas), "The Low-lying Excited States of Donor-acceptor Copolymers: a Characterization From Tuned Long-range Corrected Density Functionals"
• Jae Won Shim, ECE (Advisor: Bernard Kippelen), "Efficient Recombination Layers for Inverted Tandem Organic Solar Cells"
• O'Neil Smith, Chemistry (Advisor: Seth Marder), "Probing Charge Injection Kinetics at the TCO-Organic Interface in Organic Photovoltaics"

Refreshments will be served.  Please RSVP here

• David Beljonne (University of Mons): “Beyond Förster Resonance Energy Transfer in Biological and Nanoscale Systems”
• Angelo Bongiorno (Georgia Institute of Technology): “Chemical Structure and Metastability of Graphene Oxide”
• Yuan-Chung Cheng (National Taiwan University): “On Excitonic Phenomena in Molecular Aggregates: A Tribute to Robert J. Silbey”
• Jérôme Cornil (University of Mons): "Charge Transport in Organic Semiconductors : From Molecular Junctions to Supramolecular Assemblies"
• Veaceslav Coropceanu (Georgia Institute of Technology): "The Effect of Static and Dynamic Disorder on Charge Transport in Organic Molecular Semiconductors"
• Demetrio da Silva Filho (University of Brasília): "Charge Transport in Organic Semiconductors: Probing High Mobility with Light"
• Rigoberto Hernandez (Georgia Institute of Technology): "Free Energy and Structure in Biomolecular Pulling Simulations"
• Greg Scholes (University of Toronto): "A Little Coherence in Electronic Energy Transfer Dynamics"
• David Sherrill (Georgia Institute of Technology): "Understanding Non-covalent Interactions in Experimental Systems through Quantum Chemical Analysis"
• Frank Spano (Temple University): "Novel Mechanisms for Forming J-aggregates, H-aggregates and Those In-Between"
• Troy Van Voorhis (MIT): “Interactions at Organic Interfaces”
• David Yaron (Carnegie-Mellon): “Lowering the Cost of Electronic Structure Calculations by Embedding Empirical Parameters in Ab Initio Theory”

REGISTRATION

Registration is free; however, since space is limited, registration is required. The deadline for registration is November 19, 2012.

HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS

A limited number of hotel rooms have been reserved at a special rate of $139/night (includes in-room wireless, breakfast, and parking) at the nearby Courtyard Marriott Midtown Atlanta location. The deadline for making hotel reservations is October 1, 2012. Please be advised that there are a number of high profile events taking place in Atlanta the week of the symposium, so hotels in the area may sell out quickly. Make your reservation here.

DIRECTIONS

Georgia Tech Research Institute Conference Center
250 14th street NW
Atlanta, GA 30318
(Parking for the symposium is free)

In emerging technologies, such as those in the energy sector and electronics industry, the ability to efficiently mass-produce thin film at a desirable rate and cost and of a desired quality is a major challenge.  In such fledgling fields, fabrication is primarily done in a laboratory using bench-top production lines, which do not necessarily scale to mass production lines. This discontinuity has prompted research to understand the feasibility of using traditional scalable manufacturing methods to produce thin film rapidly, with minimal waste, and optimal coating uniformity and quality. In this talk, we will explore various coating techniques and the mechanisms that control the quality of the coated film.  Specifically, an understanding of defect generation in coated thin film fabricated using roll-to-roll processes, especially slot die extrusion, will be elucidated.  The influence of such defects on system performance will be discussed, as it relates to polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. Building upon this framework, preliminary results on the development and implementation of a novel hybrid technology that couples printing and extrusion technologies to continuously coat thin film in discrete and non-discrete patterns will be presented.

While the seminar is free, we do ask you to please RSVP here.  

ICSM is the longest-running conference series in the field of conducting and semiconducting organic materials. It started in the mid-1970's with the advent of highly electrically conducting molecular crystals and conjugated polymers (hence, the original reference to synthetic metals!). It has now become a premiere venue for discussion of the latest developments in the areas of organic electronics and photonics, from synthesis to characterization, computational modeling, device fabrication, and real-world applications. We are glad to bring ICSM back to the US for the first time since 1996 (the most recent editions took place in Montpellier, France, 1998; Bad Gastein, Austria, 2000; Shanghai, China, 2002; Wollongong, Australia, 2004; Dublin, Ireland, 2006; Porto de Galinhas, Brazil, 2008; and Kyoto, Japan, 2010).

ICSM is expected to attract around a thousand participants from all over the world to discuss their new science and technology results in the area of organic/flexible electronics and photonics. Ten plenary speakers will present their latest research along with 96 invited speakers. The program will also include some 135 invited short talks and three poster sessions, which will provide participants the opportunity to highlight their recent work.

It is well acknowledged that carrier mobilities of conjugated polymers can be further enhanced by highly crystalline arrangement of alkyl side chains and backbones. However, to date, a detailed description and mechanism of polymer semiconductor crystallization is still not reported in literature due to the scarcity of polymer crystals. Thiophene oligomers are excellent model structures for the corresponding polydisperse polymers to elucidate the structure-property relationship. 

The objective of this study is to develop a deeper and more fundamental understanding of the chain packing in low molecular weight polymer in crystalline thin films and its role in the resulting electronic properties of the material. For this purpose we have synthesized a special homologue series of oligomers of a benchmark building block, didodecylquaterthiophene, ranging in length from the monomer to the hexamer. Crystalline thin films of these materials are be prepared by various solution-casting techniques, and then characterized by a combination of synchrotron grazing incidence X-ray scattering (GIXS) including crystallographic refinement calculations, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and electrical measurements in thin film devices, such as organic field effect transistors. An improved understanding of the molecular packing of these oligomers in thin films will help us to understand and ultimately control crystallization in higher molecular weight polymers, as the oligomers will serve as crystallization models. The results from this work will have a high impact on the general synthetic design rules for semiconducting polymers with controlled molecular weight and narrow polydispersity that produce highly crystalline thin films.

The event will gather participants from both the academic world and companies active in the field of OLEDs, Printed transistors and OPV.

While free, registration is required and there will be a limit on the number of attendees.

The academic speakers will include: Rick McCullough (Carnegie-Mellon); Tobin Marks (Northwestern); Zhenan Bao (Stanford); and Natalie Stingelin-Stutzmann (Imperial College London).

Additionally, John Reynolds and David Bucknall will be speaking as representatives of Georgia Tech-COPE.

Industry will be represented by speakers from companies that include: Eight19; Cambridge Display Technology; Thin Film Electronics; Polyera; Universal Display Corporation; Rhodia: Member of the Solvay Group; Moser Baer; Plextronics; and Solvay.

Neuromorphic spiking networks and associated highly parallel architectures have been the object of much interest in recent years. These systems are expected to complement binary CMOS architectures in applications where substantial amounts of imprecise information have to be processed. Some of the applications where neuromorphic systems could outperform binary architectures include adaptive learning, pattern classification, and outcome prediction. Complex neuromorphic circuits using nanocrystalline-silicon (nc-Si) thin-film transistors (TFTs) and memristive (resistive switch) devices have been fabricated, modeled and simulated. Complex synaptic and learning behavior has been demonstrated as a natural outcome of using these specific devices. The low-temperature fabrication processes employed have several important potential consequences. First, the fabrication processes are consistent with the use of glass or flexible substrates. The neuromorphic architecture may provide for information processing that is more efficient than that expected for conventional TFT circuitry. Second, the fabrication processes are compatible with a CMOS process, which facilitates 3-D applications where the neuromorphic circuitry is integrated with a CMOS core. Finally, the results demonstrate the feasibility of fabricating a 3-D system with physical structure similar to the human neocortex.

About Professor Vogel

Eric M. Vogel is currently Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT). Prior to joining GIT in August 2011, he was Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) where he was also Associate Director of the Texas Analog Center of Excellence and led UTD’s portion of the Southwest Academy for Nanoelectronics. Prior to joining UTD in August of 2006, he was leader of the CMOS and Novel Devices Group and founded the Nanofab at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He received the Ph. D. degree in 1998 in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University and the B. S. degree in 1994 in electrical engineering from Penn State University. Dr. Vogel’s research interests relate to devices and materials for future electronics including advanced MOS devices and materials and nanoelectronic devices. He has published over 110 publications, written 4 book chapters and given over 50 invited talks and tutorials.

Biography

Professor Takao Someya of the University of Tokyo is one of the world’s leading experts in large-area organic electronics and circuits. He has received a number of awards, most recently a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Prize (awarded in the presence of the Crown Prince of Japan), and the 1st Prize of the newly established German Innovation Award. He is a member of the board of directors of the U.S. Materials Research Society, one example among many of his constructive participation in professional societies and of his engagement in the international research community. On April 1, 2009, he occupied a new chair at the University of Tokyo that was created to promote multidisciplinary research.

His research ranges from physics to materials and processes to devices and circuits, which he crafts in innovative and unconventional configurations. He has demonstrated wireless power transfer (e.g. laptop charging from a grid embedded throughout a tabletop), the elements of electronic skin (e.g. demonstrating a robotic hand with sense of touch), and other visionary applications of large area electronics (such as a sheet of electronically programmable Braille). Soon to be seen is a “wearable ultrasound” fabric, such as for 24/7 fetal monitoring.

Abstract

Stretchable and Ultraflexible Electronics using Printed Organic Transistors

In view of the tremendous technical challenges for realizing next-generation information technology, organic semiconductors have attracted significant attention since the emerging electronics based on them have features that are complimentary to main stream electronics based on silicon. Thanks to the recent advent of organic transistors (FETs), the emergence of a new class of electronics makes full use of the unique features of organic semiconductors, such as the ultralow cost, low weight, and flexibility, is becoming more realistic. With this background, our group discerned that large-area circuits could be easily fabricated using organic transistors, which are essential for certain applications, and has developed large-area sensors and actuators using organic transistors. More accurately, we have integrated various types of sheet-type sensors and sheet-type actuators with organic transistors on plastic films and have demonstrated electronic artificial skin (E-skin), a sheet-type Braille display, a wireless power transmission sheet, and many other sheet-type devices. 

Abstract:
Solar light energy conversion devices such as photovoltaics have been recognized as an alternative energy source to fulfill our increasing energy demand. The potential of organic or perovskite solar cells rests not in their inherently inexpensive composition, but rather in their amenability to solution-processed manufacturing methods, such as ink-jet and roll-to-roll (R2R) printing. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) has developed printing processes for printing large scale solar cells up to 30 cm wide using a R2R process.

In this seminar, the development of high performance materials and the process to translate device performance from lab scale to pilot scale will be presented: a scalable process using an in-house designed slot die coater based on a 3D printer has been transferred to R2R printers and high performance flexible perovskite solar cells have been fabricated. The benefits of different encapsulation schemes in achieving stable modules will be addressed and in-situ monitoring of the modules in a “real world” test environment has been conducted. 

Bio:
Dr. Gao spent several years at CSIRO as an experimental scientist working on synthesis, modification and characterization of polymer materials on the CRC extended wear contact lens project as well as development of transparent porous polymer films for artificial cornea applications.   After completing her PhD in 2003, Dr. Gao joined the nanomaterial group of CSIRO to develop the new nanomaterial platforms for fuel cells and work on the supercapacitor project in collaboration with industry.  
 
From 2007 to 2010, she worked on the CRC dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) project as a chief researcher in the synthesis of hole transport and polymers charge retardation materials for solid state DSSC and developed the methodology and techniques for fabrication of higher efficiency DSSC.  Since 2011, Dr. Gao has been working on polymer (VICOSC project) and perovskite solar cell aspects to lead, design, screen, characterize and fabricate thin film solar cells for achieving facile, solution processible, reproducible and printable high performance devices.
  
Dr. Gao has received more than 1300 citations from her publications and two patents.  She was awarded the CMHT Chief award in 2005, CSIRO Medal for Research Achievement in 2009, and CSIRO/Chinese Academy Science (CAS) Exchange Fellowship in 2010, respectively.