Tunable Charge Injection Layers for Organic Semiconductors

In recent time, light weight, flexibility, low-cost and tunability of organic semiconductors (OS) have drawn the attention of a broad scientific community and semiconductor industry, making them usable in many applications such as active-matrix organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) in smartphones, organic field-effect transistors (OFETs), solar cells, memories, photoswitches and sensors.

Therefore, tremendous effort has been made to improve OS functionality.

The development has reached the point where the contact resistance with the metal electrode, especially in OFETs, is becoming the main parameter limiting the performance of OS-based devices.

Recent research in the Host Group has revealed that molecular monolayers (MoMs) composed of aromatic carboxylic molecules can be deprotonated on a silver substrate in a controlled manner.

This finding opens a way towards developing entirely new highly efficient Charge Injection Layers for organic semiconductors.

In this project I will employ state-of-the-art computational methods to characterize interfaces between Ag substrate and MoMs composed of aromatic carboxylic acid molecules, and design tunable CILs based on the controlled deprotonation. The project will go in hand with the experimental research carried out by the Host Group.

If successful, our collaboration can help the OFETs finally reach their full market potential. My research will be carried out at CEITEC that offers the ideal set of equipment. The project will be supervised by Dr. Jan echal, an expert in experimental characterization of molecular interfaces, and co-supervised by Dr.

Pavel Jelnek, an expert in molecular interfaces modeling.