Photophysics of radical-based organic semiconductors for spin-optoelectronic devices

自由基材料具有未配对的电子，这导致了可能用于下一代有机电子的不同寻常的物理。虽然大多数有机材料包含所有配对的电子，但未配对的电子具有量子力学自旋，这导致了磁性和自由基的双重性质。与高效的光吸收和发射相结合，这些特性可用于各种技术，从消除了三重态损耗的有机发光二极管(OLED)和光伏(OPV)，到用于数据信息传输的光磁设备和分子规模电子设备。将自由基集成到这些应用中需要详细了解它们的基本能量和电子转移物理，这将通过最先进的和新设计的飞秒到微秒时间尺度的光学光谱技术来探索。最初的焦点将放在基于自由基的体系的光氧化还原和光伏行为上，对于这些体系，利用激发态的双重自旋流形提供了增强的效率限制。第二个目标是将这些材料与铁磁电极连接，用于光电子学和自旋电子学设备中的自旋极化电荷注入。这两项工作将结合自旋光伏与自由基和其他有机材料，以实现在光照射下产生自旋极化电流。

Radical materials have unpaired electrons, leading to unusual physics that could be utilised in next-generation organic electronics. While most organic materials contain all-paired electrons, the unpaired electron has a quantum mechanical spin which gives rise to magnetism and doublet character of the radicals. In combination with efficient light absorption and emission, these properties can be used in technologies which range from organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and photovoltaics (OPV) with eliminated triplet losses, to photomagnetic devices and molecular-scale electronics for data information transfer. The integration of radicals into these applications requires a detailed understanding of their fundamental energy and electron transfer physics, which will be explored by state-of-the-art and newly designed optical spectroscopy techniques on femto- to microsecond timescales. The initial focus will be on the photoredox and photovoltaic behaviour of radical-based systems, for which utilisation of the doublet-spin manifold of excited states offers enhanced efficiency limits. A second target is to interface these materials with ferromagnetic electrodes for spin-polarised charge injection in optoelectronics and spintronics devices. These two efforts will be combined towards spin-photovoltaics with radicals and other organic materials to achieve generation of spin-polarised currents under light irradiation.