Deirdre M. O’CarrollAssociate Professor

Rutgers UniversityDepartment of Materials Science and Engineering

Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Group Website: http://photonics.rutgers.edu/ O’Carroll Lab

Organic, Hybrid and Low-Dimensional Semiconductors

for Electronic and Photonic Applications

http://photonics.rutgers.edu/

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Non-Traditional Semiconductor Materials

Organic and Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Semiconductors

Examples: conjugated small molecules, conjugated polymers, hybrid perovskites, metal-oxide frameworks

Applications:

• wearable and flexible electronics,

• biosensors, bioimaging,

• thermal sensors,

• solar cells,

• photodetectors,

• light-emitting diodes.

Low-dimensional Semiconductors

Examples: graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides, nanowires, quantum dots, MXenes, black phosphorous

Applications:

• high-performance transistors,

• flexible electronics, transparent electrodes,

• supercapacitors,

• light-emitting diodes,

• IR photodetectors,

• quantum photonic and electronic devices.

Deirdre O’Carroll

Organic light emitting diodes (OLED) from Samsung & Philips

Organic Semiconductors

• Global market for products such as

organic light emitting displays, solar cells

and thin film transistors is forecast to be

more than $150 billion by 2027.†

• Trade-off between low mobility charge

carriers and exciton formation/dissociation.

† Global Organic Electronic Market, by Market Research Future

Organic

Semiconductors

Organic solar cells Thin film transistors (TFT)

• International companies using organic semiconductor materials (Samsung, Sony, IBM, Philips, LG…..)

• Motivation:

- Processing advantage of plastics,

- Synthetic tuneability,

- Frenkel-type excitons,

- Recent commercial availability,

- Earth abundant constituent elements.

O’Carroll LabDeirdre O’Carroll 3

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Organic Semiconductor Research Examples

Non-Fullerene Organic Solar Cells

Device costs P-OLEDs were between 3-

5 times cheaper than inorganic LED

devices, per unit area; operating costs

were similar.

Embodied energy was a factor of up to

95 less for P-OLED and yearly GHG

emissions were comparable.

C. M. Carter, et al., Journal of Cleaner Production

137, 1418-1431 (2016).

Assessment of OLEDs

Cui et al., National Science Review 7, pp1239-1246 (2020)

Sun et al., Joule 4, 407-419 (2020)

Deirdre O’Carroll

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Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Semiconductors

Pedesseau et al, ACS Nano 10, 9776-9786 (2016)

“Why Perovskite Solar Cells are So Efficient”

Physics Today (2018)

Perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells now being commercialized with efficiency up to 29.5% (e.g., Oxford PV)

Deirdre O’Carroll

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Hybrid Semiconductor Research Examples

Nontoxic, Ultrastable CuI Hybrid LEDs

Zhu et al., ACS Energy Letters 6, pp 2565-2574 (2021)

Flexible InOx-Indicone Thin-film Transistors

Lee et al.,

Journal of Materials

Chemistry C

9, 4322 (2021)

Lin et al., Nature Energy 4, 864-873 (2019)

Tandem Hybrid Perovskite Solar Cells

Deirdre O’Carroll

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Low-Dimensional Semiconductors

Fang et al., InfoMat 2, pp 291-317 (2020)Akinwande et al., Nature 573, p507 (2019)

Deirdre O’Carroll

Materials with nanometer confinement in one or more

dimensions: e.g., graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides,

nanowires, quantum dots, Mxenes, black phosphorous

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Low-Dimensional Semiconductor Research Examples

Full-color Quantum Dot Photodetector Carbon Dots

Modified synthesisStandard synthesis

Carbon dots synthesized by solvothermal method

from 1,5-diaminonaphthalene and citric acid.

Javed, et al., Nanoscale Advances (2021)Kim et al., Science Advances 5 (2019)

Photodetectors based on PbS, CdSe

and CdS quantum dots

Deirdre O’Carroll

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Challenges

No shortage of new semiconductors materials and devices demonstrated at

lab scale with superior properties to silicon and more traditional inorganic

semiconductors (GaN, InGaAs, etc.). Significant challenges to their

commercialization are:

• Scale-up/translating emerging semiconductor materials to microchip

“fabs”.

• Synthesis and handling

• Limited availability of raw materials

• Toxicity of raw materials or processes

• Challenges in recycling

• High embodied energy in processing

• Regulatory barriers

Deirdre O’Carroll

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• Renewed focus on sustainability to avoid/mitigate pitfalls of resource hungry products.

• Improved avenues for early-stage researchers to converse with manufacturers and venture

capitalists to learn more about road-blocks to commercialization of semiconductor

materials.

• Factor cost, scale-up, raw materials supply alongside early-stage research into synthesis

and properties of new materials. Who does this? Retrain scientists, engineers,

entrepreneurs, product designers and developers?

• Develop better, more-assessible software to conduct life-cycle assessments, life-cycle

costing.

• Sustained investments in advanced manufacturing.

• Sustained investments in recycling of electronic and optoelectronic devices.

• Train/educate young scientists and engineers in how to assess the challenges of

commercialization.

Some Potential Solutions

Deirdre O’Carroll