Improving the performance of environmentally friendly semiconductors

Vast amounts of energy and toxic chemicals are required to produce the silicon semiconductors used in most of today’s electronics. Wallenberg Academy Fellow Alexander Gillett will optimize a more environmentally friendly form of semiconductor, organic semiconductors, to make them more energy efficient and so more useful. 

Almost all electronics are currently based on silicon, a semiconductor. Researchers have developed carbon-based semiconductors, known as organic semiconductors, as an alternative to silicon. These semiconductors are both more environmentally friendly and potentially cheaper and easier to produce. As organic semiconductor materials can interact strongly with light, they are primarily used in applications which require the interconversion of electricity and light, such as in organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays and solar cells.  

The reason organic semiconductors are currently not more widely used is that they have some disadvantages, including how much of the Sun's energy is lost when light is converted into electricity in a solar cell. When electricity is converted into light, a lot of energy is also lost in the form of heat, which means OLED displays are less efficient and therefore require more electricity to work. 

Dr Alexander Gillett from University of Cambridge, UK, will now develop a new generation of more energy-efficient organic semiconductors. He will modify the wave function of organic semiconductors, which provides a quantum mechanical description of how they work. The hope is to develop semiconductors for things such as environmentally friendly solar cells and more energy-efficient OLED displays and lighting.  

As a Wallenberg Academy Fellow, Alexander Gillett will work at Linköping University. 

Photo Patrik Lundin