Near-Infrared Organic Semiconductor Materials for Optoelectronic Technologies

目前有机半导体技术的成功主要是由有机发光二极管(OLED)的发展推动的，有机发光二极管现在被常规地用于显示技术。然而，在过去的十年里，有机光伏(OPV)利用设备效率和稳定性的令人印象深刻的改进，已经逐渐从实验室的好奇变成了一个利基市场。它们最近的成功与有机半导体材料的快速发展不谋而合，有机半导体材料既有电子给体，也有电子受体，吸收覆盖了光谱的UV-VIS-NIR部分。1通过采用不同的化学构件的战略设计，这些新材料提供了高吸收，并将可调谐的能量带入电磁光谱的近红外区域。这使得近红外有机光电探测器(OPD)的开发成为可能，这是一种用于生物成像应用的新型光声探测器，最近还使具有开壳特性的藜麦共轭聚合物的开发成为可能，这些聚合物具有独特的光电和磁性。2，3这一协同项目将建立在伦敦大学学院施罗德小组在合成低带隙有机半导体方面的专业知识以及ICL的Gasparini小组在制造和表征高效近红外OPD器件方面的专业知识的基础上。该项目将专注于设计和合成吸收带深入到近红外(~1600 nm)的下一代近红外吸收有机半导体，并将其初步应用于用于近红外光检测的OPD器件。本项目的目标是(I)开发和合成新型的近红外吸收有机半导体和(Ii)获得在近红外区具有光电检测和低暗电流(JD)的OPD。有机半导体的化学设计具有相对窄的和特定的吸收光谱，这将使OPD能够被探索用于选择性窄带近红外光检测，其中用于生物医学应用和过程监测的有效材料选择仍然很少。

The current success of organic semiconductor technology is mainly driven by the development of organic light-emitting diodes (OLED), which are now routinely employed in display technologies. In the last decade, however, organic photovoltaics (OPV), leveraging the impressive improvement in device efficiency and stability, have gradually moved from a lab curiosity to a niche market. Their recent success has coincided with the rapid development of organic semiconductor materials, both electron donors and electron acceptors, with absorption covering the UV-Vis-NIR part of the light spectrum.1 Through strategic design adopting different chemical building blocks, these new materials afforded high absorption with tuneable energetics into the NIR region of the electromagnetic spectrum. This allowed the development of NIR organic photodetector (OPD), novel photoacoustic probes for bioimaging applications, and more recently enabled the development of quinoidal conjugated polymers with open-shell character with distinctive opto-electronic and magnetic properties.2,3 This synergistic project will build on the expertise of the Schroeder group at UCL in the synthesis of low bandgap organic semiconductors and the know-how of the Gasparini group at ICL in the fabrication and characterisation of high efficiency NIR OPD devices. The project will focus on the design and synthesis of the next generation of NIR absorbing organic semiconductors with an absorption band extending deep into the NIR (~ 1600 nm) and their initial incorporation into OPD devices for NIR photodetection. The aim of this project is (i) to develop and synthesise novel NIR absorbing organic semiconductors and (ii) to obtain OPD with photodetection in the NIR region and low dark current (Jd). The chemical design of organic semiconductors with relatively narrow and specific absorption spectra will allow OPDs to be explored for selective narrowband NIR photodetection, where effective-material choices for biomedical applications and process monitoring remain scarce.