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ECE 524: Organic Electronic Devices and Applications
In this course, you will learn the fundamentals and applications that arise from working with ‘soft’ organic semiconductors. These materials lie at the center of a rapidly growing segment in the semiconductor and display industry that have already delivered the organic LED screen in your cell phone, the most beautiful flat panel TV you’ll ever own, flexible electronic circuits, paper thin solar cells that can be laminated on buildings and windows, and a range of new wearable technology that will fundamentally change how we monitor our health. This course will provide you with the knowledge that you need to get involved in this rapidly growing industry.
Text: Forrest, Stephen R. Organic Electronics. Oxford University Press (2020)
Topics:
1. Molecular structure
- Born-Oppenheimer approximation
- Linear combination of atomic orbitals
- Coulomb and exchange interactions
- Excited states and optical transitions
- Molecular vibrations, spectra
2. Physical structure
- Van der Waals bonding
- Molecular crystals
- Disordered thin films
- Purification methods
- Deposition and patterning
3. Excitations and charge carriers
- Excitons
- Exciton generation and decay
- Excimers & aggregate states
- Energy transfer, Förster & Dexter
- Exciton diffusion
- Exciton annihilation
- Exciton dissociation
- Charge generation mechanisms
- Cations and anions, ionization potentials
- Polarons
4. Electrical transport
- Band versus hopping transport
- Space charge limited transport
- Chemical doping
- Energetic disorder
- Mobility in organic semiconductors
- Charge carrier injection
- Langevin and trap-mediated recombination
5. Devices and applications
- OLEDs: vision, metrics
- OLEDs: device structure, performance, processing
- OLEDs: state-of-the-art techniques
- OPVs: operation
- OPVs: thermodynamics, donor-acceptor junctions
- OPVs: architectures and performance
- TFTs: architecture, materials, processing, performance
- OSLs: performance characteristics and electrical pumping