IRES Track I: US-Japan Collaboration on Organic Electronics Research and Education

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Materials scientists from the University of Vermont will partner with engineers and physicists at Yamagata University (Japan) for an IRES program that will foster and nurture a new generation of interdisciplinary materials scientists. At the end of the program participants will be equipped with key experimental skills and background tailored for the specific needs of organic electronics research and technology that bridge physical chemistry, chemical engineering, and condensed matter physics. Three PhDs and twelve undergraduate US students will spend ten weeks working in teams with the Japanese mentors and their students on interdisciplinary projects specifically designed to leverage the ongoing collaboration on small molecules electronics between the US and Japanese participants. The students will learn specific experimental techniques while immersed in a new, culturally -distinct collaborative environment. They will gain unprecedented access to fabrication and characterization techniques inaccessible at their home institution. Students will undergo a two-week intensive language training specifically focused on laboratory work communication and become part of the cultural immersion activities at Yamagata University. The group also benefits from the contribution of a school of education faculty member that will conduct assessment activities resulting in best practices recommendations for a Global Scientist certificate offering at the University of Vermont. A semester -long recruitment plan will focus on women and minorities from small or HBCU colleges in the northeastern United States.For the past ten years, synthetic chemistry efforts that produced soluble derivatives of small molecule semiconductors led to macroscopically-ordered crystalline thin films and scalable, cost-effective roll-to-roll processing techniques that promise a future where flexible, bio-integrated, or disposable electronics may play a significant role in our everyday lives. Though these advances have been incredibly significant, the performance metrics of organic semiconductor-based transistors, LEDs, and solar cells are still far behind (to varying degrees) their crystalline inorganic counterparts. The scientific and engineering communities are at a turning point where the next major step forward can only be realized with novel interdisciplinary approaches based on a fundamental understanding of the electronic and excitonic properties. The Vermont -Yamagata IRES partnership will foster and nurture a new generation of interdisciplinary materials scientists, that will become experts ready to tackle the grand challenges of small molecule electronics. The underlying scientific theme of the student projects investigates correlations between long-range order, the nature of intermolecular interactions, and electronic properties in small molecule families. It seeks ways of exploiting these correlations towards establishing design rules for optimization of electronic and excitonic properties of small molecule thin films. Such design rules lead to avenues for affordable, sustainable, organic device platforms for a variety of applications including photovoltaics, flexible electronics, and bio-interfacing. The proposed experimental work will also trigger theoretical questions related to bridging the quantum chemistry body of knowledge with condensed matter approaches that take into account long range interactions, thus building an interdisciplinary model for excitonic and charge carrier behavior in these systems.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.