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

佛蒙特大学的材料科学家将与日本山形大学的工程师和物理学家合作开展IRES项目，该项目将培养和培养新一代跨学科的材料科学家。在计划结束时，参与者将掌握关键的实验技能和背景，这些技能和背景是为有机电子研究和技术的特定需求量身定做的，这些研究和技术连接了物理化学、化学工程和凝聚态物理。三名博士和12名美国本科生将与日本导师和他们的学生一起工作10周，共同开展跨学科项目，专门设计利用美国和日本参与者之间正在进行的小分子电子学合作。学生们将在沉浸在一个新的、不同文化的合作环境中学习具体的实验技术。他们将获得前所未有的制造和表征技术，这些技术在他们的家乡机构是无法获得的。学生们将接受为期两周的强化语言培训，专门针对实验室工作交流，并成为山形大学文化沉浸活动的一部分。该小组还受益于一名教育学院教员的贡献，该教员将开展评估活动，为佛蒙特州大学提供的全球科学家证书提出最佳做法建议。一项为期一学期的招聘计划将侧重于来自美国东北部小型或HBCU大学的女性和少数族裔。在过去的十年里，生产可溶小分子半导体衍生品的合成化学努力导致了宏观有序的晶体薄膜和可扩展的、具有成本效益的卷到卷处理技术，这些技术有望在未来灵活、生物集成或一次性电子产品在我们的日常生活中发挥重要作用。尽管这些进展令人难以置信地显著，但有机半导体晶体管、LED和太阳能电池的性能指标仍然远远落后于(不同程度)它们的晶体无机同行。科学界和工程界正处于一个转折点，只有在对电子和激子性质有基本了解的基础上，通过新的跨学科方法才能实现下一个重大进展。佛蒙特州-山形IRES的合作伙伴关系将培养和培养新一代跨学科材料科学家，他们将成为准备应对小分子电子学重大挑战的专家。学生项目的基本科学主题是调查长程有序、分子间相互作用的性质和小分子家族中的电子性质之间的相关性。它寻求利用这些相关性来建立优化小分子薄膜的电子和激子性质的设计规则的方法。这样的设计规则为包括光伏、柔性电子和生物接口在内的各种应用提供了负担得起、可持续的有机设备平台的途径。拟议的实验工作还将引发与量子化学知识体系与考虑远程相互作用的凝聚态方法相联系的理论问题，从而为这些系统中的激子和电荷载流子行为建立一个跨学科模型。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.