CRC TRR 61 A06 - High-performance charge transport and electro-optic response in self assembled supra-molecular systems

Basic data for this project

Type of project: Subproject in DFG-joint project hosted at University of Münster
Duration: 06/06/2008 - 30/06/2012 | 1st Funding period

Description

The development of conducting organic materials based on conjugated (hetero)aromatic rings opened the field for high potential applications like organic field effect transistors (OFET), organic light emitting devices (OLED), photorefractive beam couplers and photovoltaic cells. Despite the decisive progress in the exploration of organic materials for molecular electronics and optics fundamental aspects of carrier transport still remain unclear, making it actually difficult to optimize charge transport. This has significant impacts on different fields and applications of these molecules. On the one hand, the conductance of the organic material as well as their electro-optic and photorefractive features depends crucially on the efficiency of charge transport within the organic layers. These effects could be considerably enhanced when the charge transport is improved. On the other hand, a detrimental property of organic electro-optic materials is their microscopic heterogeneity. The variability of the local electronic environment of nonlinear molecules decreases the macroscopic electro-optic effect. In our project we address these issues in order to improve conducting organic materials far beyond the actual state of the art. The innovative approach of this project is the translation of multiple supra-molecular interactions into a highly ordered packing mode in solid states for effective charge transport. This will allow the incorporation of processable highly ordered self-assembled superstructures (films, nanoribbons) and finally lead to the far-reaching goal of high-performance electronic devices such as organic field-effect transistors and photorefractive electro-optic beam couplers. The results of this research will be of importance not only for organic field effect transistors and electro-optic devices but also for photovoltaic or electroluminescent systems.

Keywords: self assembled supra-molecular systems