Organic Conducting Polymer Flexible Electronics and Foldable Displays and Photovoltaics, Paul R. Berger

Also see Molecular Electronics with Quantum Functional Circuit Elements Using Conjugated Polymers

Advisor: Paul R. Berger Students: Ryan Mattei (ECE Masters) Collaborators: Malcolm Chisholm (Chemistry, Ohio State) Arthur Epstein (Physics & Chemistry, Ohio State) Terry Gustafson (Chemistry, Ohio State) George Ritter (Edison Welding Institute) Uwe H.F. Bunz (Chemistry, Georgia Tech) Richard B. Timmons (Chemistry, University of Texas at Arlington) Jeremy Burroughes (Cambridge Display Technology) Dieter Neher (Potsdam, formerly MPI-P Mainz) Ullrich Scherf (Wuppertal, formerly MPI-P Mainz) Gerhard Wegner (MPI-P Mainz, retired) Sultan Suleimanov (Uzbekistan) Former Graduate Students: Minjae Kim (ECE Masters thesis 2017) Woo-Jun Yoon (ECE Master's thesis 2006, Ph.D. 2009) Ms. Shumaila Afzal (ECE non-thesis Master's, 2006) Ms. Yifan Xu (ECE Master's Thesis 2002, Ph.D. 2005)

Importance of the Problem:

Organic semiconductors offer new vistas for the exploration of electronics and optoelectronics that augments, not necessarily replaces, existing inorganic semiconductors. The cost of inorganic semiconductors is quite prohibitive for large area applications, nearing the price per square inch of real estate in Manhattan. Also, the rigidity and opacity of inorganic semiconductors prevent them from specialized applications that require flexibility and transparency (i.e. heads-up display). Polymer semiconductors and organic small molecule semiconductors are two classes of materials that enable new opportunities. Small molecules are generally sublimed in a vacuum system, whereas polymers are dissolved in appropriate solvents and applied by solution processing, such as spin-coating, ink-jet printing and screen printing. Applications for polymer semiconductors include polymer field effect transistors (PFET), polymer light emitting diodes (PLED) and polymer solar cells.

More more background information, see:

• Electronics News: "Plastic Electronics to Top $23.5B by 2012" (February 10, 2005)

Brief Description of Our Work and Results:

Our group is exploring PFETs for large area flexible electronics, such as Smartcard technology (i.e. bankcards), where the computational power and memory storage needed is very simple and does not warrant a Si CMOS solution. Our group has explored short channel effects of polythiophene-based PFETs and the photo-responsivity of other PFETs that show a dramatic response to PFET operation and drain current with incident light. The photoFET was performed as a joint effort with Prof. Uwe H.F. Bunz at Georgia Tech.

Also, our group is investigating pulsed plasma polymerized (PPP) dielectrics deposited by our collaboration with Prof. Richard B. Timmons at the University of Texas at Arlington. These dielectric films are intended for use as flexible gate dielectric material in PFETs that replaces rigid silicon dioxide, typically employed in PFETs that sacrifices the flexibility advantage of PFETs over inorganic semiconductors. The pulsed plasma process also offers a very gentle deposition that occurs during the OFF cycle. A large parameter space can be explored of deposition conditions, post-deposition heat treatments and selection of a wide range of monomer source materials. By a judicious choice of monomers, both high dielectric constant (for gate oxide replacements) and low dielectric constant (for interlayer dielectrics) are envisioned.

Visiting Faculty Positions

Short Courses/Tutorial

• "Organic PV", 35th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, June 20-25, 2010 at the Hawaiian Convention Center in Waikiki, Hawaii

Awards, Citations and Recognitions

• Awarded $1M from Ohio Department of Development (ODOD) to develop advanced durability sealing systems for solar cells Ferro Awarded $1 Million Grant for Solar Cell Research. (Decmeber 2009)
• Graduate Student, W-J. Yoon, received a Runner-Up in the Best Poster Award at the 34th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, Philadelphia, PA (June 7-12, 2009).

• Graduate Student, W-J. Yoon, received an Honorable Mention at the 33rd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, San Diego, CA (May 11-16, 2008). (see http://guntherportfolio.blogspot.com/2008/05/pvsc-33-closing-session.html )

• "Conference Chairman, " Ohio State Polymer Consortium Review," in Columbus, OH (April 27, 2004).

• "Special Invitation by National Science Foundation to Workshop on Technological Challenges for Flexible, Light-weight, Low-cost and Scalable Organics Electronics and Photonic" (January 16-17, 2003 at the Hilton Arlington & Towers in Arlington, VA)

Invited Talks

• "Next generation plastic low cost memory devices," Paul R. Berger, Nanoelectronics: Near Term Commercial Applications for Nanotechnology in Electronics, San Jose, California, (November 8-10, 2006).

Patents

• "Demonstration of Room Temperature Negative Differential Resistance in Polymer Diodes Using a Thin Oxide Tunneling Barrier at the Anode," Paul R. Berger and Woo-Jun Yoon, [Disclosure submitted May 17, 2005; provisional filed November 3, 2005, full patent filed November 3, 2006, Serial. No. & Code 11/592,419].

• One pending application to be filed by Cambridge Display Technology on light emitting polymers during consulting services. (July 17, 1999).

• "Covering," filed by Cambridge Display Technology Limited in Great Britain (App. No. GB9928694.0), Filed December 3, 1999.

• "Fibre Optic Device," ," Alec Gunner, Karl Stephen Heeks, Peter Devine, Julian Charles Carter, George Bead, Richard O'Dell, Ian Millard and Paul Berger, filed by Cambridge Display Technology Limited in Great Britain (App. No. GB9927594.3), Filed November 22, 1999. Granted May 23, 2001, GB2356464.

• "Light Emitting Devices," Paul Raymond Berger and Stephen Karl Heeks, filed by Cambridge Display Technology Limited in Great Britain
  • Great Britain awarded ((Filed October 15, 1999, App. No. GB9924515.1, Filed October 12, 2000, GB0208403.6, Granted July 31, 20 02, GB2371679)
  • World Intellectual Property Organization awarded (WO0129909)
  • Australian patent awarded (AU7803400)
  • United States Patent Office (Filed on April 15, 2002, Publ. Appl. No. 20030193796)

• "Method of Producing Organic Light-Emissive Devices," Paul Raymond Berger and Stephen Karl Heeks, filed by Cambridge Display Technology Limited in Great Britain
  • Great Britain awarded (Filed June 11, 1999, App. No. GB9913695.4, Filed June 1, 2000, App. No. GB0200245.9, Granted April 10, 2002, GB2367692)
  • World Intellectual Property Organization patent awarded (WO0076008)
  • Australian patent awarded (AU4937300)
  • U. S. Patent # 6,878,297, Issued on April 12, 2005.

• "Display Devices," filed by Cambridge Display Technology Limited in Great Britain
  • Great Britain patent pending (App. No. GB9901334.4), Filed January 21, 1999, Priority Claimed December 8, 1998; "Display Devic es," filed by Cambridge Display Technology Limited in Great Britain, App. No. GB9827014.3).
  • World Intellectual Property Organization patent awarded (WO0035028)
  • European Patent Office patent awarded (EP1147562)
  • Australian patent awarded (AU1573500)
  • Canadian patent awarded (CA2354139)

• "Patterned Organic Light-Emitting Device," filed by Cambridge Display Technology Limited in Great Britain (App. No. GB9618476.7), Filed September 4, 1996.

Publications

1. "Plasmon-enhanced optical absorption and photocurrent in organic bulk heterojunction photovoltaic devices using self-assembled layer of silver nanoparticles" Woo-Jun Yoon, Kyung-Young Jung, Jiwen Liu, Thirumalai Duraisamy, Rao Revur, Fernando L. Teixeira, Suvankar Sengupta and Paul R. Berger, Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells, 94, pp. 128-132 (published online September 13, 2009, in print February 2010). PDF (461 kB)

2. "4.8% Efficient Poly(3-hexylthiophene)-Fullerene (1:0.8) Bulk Heterojunction Photovoltaic Devices with Plasma Treated AgO_x/ITO Anode Modification," Woo-Jun Yoon and Paul R. Berger, Applied Physics Letters, 92, 013306 (January 7, 2008). PDF (312 kB)

3. "Enhanced Emission using Thin Li-Halide Cathodic Interlayers for Improved Injection into Poly(p-phenylene vinylene) Derivative PLEDs," Woo-Jun Yoon, Scott B. Orlove, Robert L. Olmon, and Paul R. Berger, Electrochemical and Solid-State Letters, 11, pp. J76-J78 (2008). PDF (319 kB)

4. "Plasma-polymerized multistacked bipolar gate dielectric for organic thin-film transistors," Organic Electronics, 11, pp. 1767-1771 (August 6, 2010). PDF (602 kB)

5. "Atomic layer deposited HfO2 gate dielectrics for low-voltage operating, high-performance poly-(3-hexythiophene) organic thin-film transistors, Woo-Jun Yoon and Paul R. Berger, Organic Electronics, 11,, pp. 1719-1722 (August 6, 2010). PDF (466 kB)

6. "Photoresponsivity of Polymer Thin Film Transistors Based on PPE Derivative with Improved Hole-Injection," Yifan Xu, Paul R. Berger, James N. Wilson and Uwe H.F. Bunz, Applied Physics Letters, 85, pp. 4219-4221 (November 1, 2004). PDF (73 kB)

7. "High Electric Field Effects on Short Channel Polythiophene Polymer Field Effect Transistors," Yifan Xu and Paul R. Berger, Journal of Applied Physics , 95 , pp. 1497-1501 (February 1, 2004). PDF (98 kB)

8. "Plasma Polymerized Multistacked Organic Bipolar Films: A New Approach to Flexible High k-Dielectrics," Dhiman Bhattacharyya, Woo-Jun Yoon, Paul R. Berger and Richard B. Timmons, Advanced Materials, 20, pp. 2383-2388 (June 18, 2008). PDF (268 kB)

9. "Pulsed Plasma Polymerized Dichlorotetramethyldisiloxane High-k Gate Dielectrics for Polymer Field Effect Transistors," Yifan Xu, Paul R. Berger, Jai Cho and Richard B. Timmons, Journal of Applied Physics, 99, 014104 (January 1, 2006). PDF (78 kB)

10. "C-V Characterization of Pulsed Plasma Polymerized Allylamine Dielectrics," Yifan Xu, Paul R. Berger, Jai Cho and Richard B. Timmons, Journal of Electronic Materials, 33, pp. 1240-1247 (October 2004). PDF (585 kB)

Conference Presentations

1. "Electrode Surface Modifications for Efficient Polymer Bulk Heterojunction Photovoltaic Devices," Paul R. Berger, 2010 SEMICON, to be presented at Symposium on Emerging Semiconductor Technologies at ISTC/CSTIC, Shanghai, China, (March 16-18, 2010).

2. "Efficient Poly(3-hexylthiophene)-Fullerene Derivative Bulk Heterojunction Photovoltaic Devices using Unique Self-assembled Layer of Ag Nanoparticles with Controllable Particle-to-particle Spacing," Woo-Jun Yoon, Kyung-Young Jung, Fernando L. Teixeira, Paul R. Berger, Jiwen Liu, Thirumalai Duraisamy, Rao Revur and Suvankar Sengupta, 34th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, Philadelphia, PA (June 7-12, 2009).

3. "Efficient Organic Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells through Near Infrared Absorbing Metallated Thiophene Complexes," Woo-Jun Yoon, Yagnaseni Ghosh, Brian Alberding, Malcolm H. Chisholm and Paul R. Berger, 34th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, Philadelphia, PA (June 7-12, 2009). Runner-up Best Poster Award.

4. "4.8% Efficient Poly(3-hexylthiophene)-Fullerene Derivative (1:0.8) Bulk Heterojunction Photovoltaic Devices using surface modifications to the indium tin oxide (ITO) anodes through plasma oxidized silver," Woo-Jun Yoon and Paul R. Berger, 33rd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, San Diego, CA (May 11-16, 2008). Honorable Mention Award.

5. "Polymer-Fullerene Bulk Heterojunction Photovoltaic Devices for Efficient Solar Energy Conversion on a Low-Cost, Flexible Substrate," Woo-Jun Yoon and Paul R. Berger, University Clean Energy Alliance of Ohio (UCEAO) Workshop, April 24, 2008.

6. "Enhanced Light Emission using Thin Metal-Halide Cathodic Interlayers for Improved Electron Injection into MEH-PPV Polymer Light Emitting Diodes," Woo-Jun Yoon, Scott B. Orlove, Robert L. Olmon, and Paul R. Berger, Fall 2005 MRS Meeting, Symposium I: Interfaces in Organic & Molecular Electronics II in Boston, MA (November 28 - December 2, 2005).

7. "High-K Polymerized Dichlorotetramethyldisiloxane Films Deposited by Radio Frequency Pulsed Plasma for Gate Dielectrics in Flexible Polymer FETs," Yifan Xu, Paul R. Berger, Jai Cho and Richard B. Timmons, Spring 2005 MRS Meeting, Symposium I: Organic Thin-Film Electronics in San Francisco, CA (March 28 - April 1, 2005).

8. "Light Sensitive Polymer Thin Film Transistors Based on BAS-PPE," Yifan Xu, Paul R. Berger, James N. Wilson and Uwe H.F. Bunz, Spring 2003 MRS Meeting, Symposium I: Flexible Electronics - Materials and Device Technology in San Francisco, CA (April 12-16, 2004).

9. "C-V Characterization of Pulsed Plasma Polymerized Allylamine Dielectrics," Yifan Xu, Paul R. Berger, Jai Cho and Richard B. Timmons, Fall MRS Meeting in Boston, MA (December 2-6, 2002).
   
   

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