Moving swiftly on from manatees to molecular semiconductors this week, join us with Dr James Kirkpatrick from Imperial College for a dicussion about his award winning work on molecular semiconductors.
James will join us on Second Nature on Monday in the usual timeslot: all welcome! Voice will be used, so please get there early if you need help setting up. Incidentally, we are trying to switch to streaming audio rather than voice, but it is proving a challenge – please bear with us.
Speaker: Dr James Kirkpatrick
Title: Towards a Nanoscale Understanding of Charge Transport in Molecular Semiconductors
Date: Monday 25th Feb
Time: 9am SLT/PST, Midday EST, 5pm GMT
Location: Second Nature Island
Abstract: Molecular semiconductors are of great technological interest, since they offer the possibility of combining the electronic properties of traditional semiconductors such as silicon, with low-cost solution based fabrication techniques such as those used in the plastic industry.
One of main drawbacks of these materials is their poor charge transporting ability. In traditional inorganic semiconductors, the existence of a high degree of order leads to a complete delocalization of charge carriers. In molecular materials charges are strongly localized and “hop” from molecule to molecule. An appropriate theoretical framework exists that allows us to determine the speed of individual hops. What is lacking is an understanding of how chemical structure controls macroscopic charge transport. Such an understanding is crucial, because it will allow chemists and engineers to design better molecules and better processing strategies.
My aim has been to simulate molecular materials accurately enough to obtain a microscopic understanding of the origins of disorder in their charge transport parameters. This involves using different simulation techniques to study the relative orientation and position of molecules in a solid and the explicit computation of their electronic parameters.
I will in particular focus on a family of graphene-like discotic liquid crystals.
