Engineering efficient contacts for organic electronic devices

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Nontechnical:Organic semiconductors are a novel class of materials that can enable new technologies. Their device applications could impact industries such as energy, transportation, communications and medicine. For such a sweeping revolution to occur, there are performance limits to be overcome. A large number of organic semiconductors with high carrier mobility, a measure of how quickly electrons move through a material, have been made. However, charge injection into organic semiconductors remains a bottleneck to the development of high performance devices. The project will confront this challenge through an integrated approach combining experiment and modelling. The goal of this project is to develop methods to describe charge injection into organic semiconductors and reduce the impact of contacts. These insights can then be used to create innovative device designs. This project will significantly advance the field of organic semiconductor devices, possibly leading to applications that are currently impossible. This project will expose students to state-of the-art semiconductor processing and characterization and prepare them for employment in modern manufacturing. The PI is a dedicated mentor and will offer research opportunities to students in the laboratory setting and integrate research into the classroom. She will also reach out to local high-schools, community colleges, universities, and children's museums. She will continue her efforts to attract and retain under-represented minority students in science by participating in special events organized at conferences and on campus, running campaigns in local schools, and actively participating in formal and informal mentoring.Technical:Organic semiconductors provide an opportunity to augment silicon electronics in non-traditional areas such as clothing, electronic paper, flexible and rollable applications, or bio-integrated applications. With the recent development of very high mobility compounds, the field faces a great challenge: a direct consequence of lowering the resistance of the active electronic layer is that now the contribution of the contact resistance becomes significant. Innovation in device design for reducing the impact of contacts on device performance is urgently needed. The goals of this project are to engineer better devices through minimizing or eliminating the contact effects and to develop a methodology for accurate determination the charge carrier mobility in the presence of severe contact effects. A set of experiments and modelling tasks were designed to allow for a better understanding of charge injection and transport in organic semiconductors, a rigorous device parameter extraction and a drastic reduction in the contact resistance to a level where intrinsic mobility is accessible even for the very high mobility materials. The proposed research is designed to spark new technologies and propel organic semiconductors to ubiquitous electronics that are currently inaccessible. The project will provide an excellent venue for educating students in a diverse and multidisciplinary environment and exposing them to state-of the-art semiconductor processing and characterization techniques. The PI is a dedicated teacher and mentor, and she will actively be involved in each stage of the project besides her students. She will seek different opportunities to provide her students funding necessary to visit national labs and other university labs. Her group will reach out to local high-schools and community colleges, and host visiting students. The PI will dedicate a conscious effort to raising awareness for diversity and inclusion in STEM, through the conferences she is organizing, university and department events, and effectively leading her own research group embedded in these values.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.