Functional Conducting Polymers and Composites

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The research to be performed in this program will focus on developing conducting polymer composites for areas in the fields of electronics and energy conversion. Organic-based electronics are providing new mechanisms of operation that promise to overcome current limitations of silicon-based devices, including cost and miniaturization. However, there remain significant challenges for integrating organic materials into devices such as memory and transistors. The proposed research program will focus on the development of new conducting polymer composites for use in dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), commonly used electronic devices. In collaboration with electrical and computer engineers, the efforts will focus on increasing read/right speeds and memory retention (i.e., reducing volatility). In addition, issues ranging from device fabrication to integration into existing electronic platforms and processes will be addressed. Given the scale of projected energy needs as well as the rapid climate change associated with growing CO2 levels in the atmosphere, there is a major push by governments to increase the rate of innovation and discovery in the area of carbon-neutral solar fuel production. This program will help address this need by developing membranes that will be a key component of standalone artificial photosynthetic devices to directly produce solar fuels. Currently, the production of membranes for these devices represents a technology gap that must be addressed so that catalysts and light absorbers being developed by researcher around the world can be integrated into a working system. Existing collaborations with researchers at Caltech and MIT leading research programs developing light absorbers and catalysts will allow rapid translation of advances in membrane design into proof of concept devices and will therefore have a significant impact in this quickly advancing field. Students involved in these studies will be uniquely trained and highly desirable in the rapidly growing renewable energy sector of the Canadian economy.