Research Activities

 

Modeling of electronic transport processes in organic semiconductors and at their interfaces

Organic conjugated semiconductors have been widely studied for their opto-electronic properties over the last two decades and are currently exploited in a large range of applications such as light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), field-effect transistors (OFETs), photovoltaic devices or (bio)sensors. Albeit organic-based devices have already penetrated into the market, especially in the field of displays and integrated circuits, intense research efforts are still carried out at both the academic and industrial level in order to better understand the key electronic processes governing the operation and performance of the devices and provide new guidelines for material design and device architecture. In particular, a ubiquitous process is the transport of electrical charges in organic thin films, which is required in most devices. Theoretical simulations play a major role by shedding light onto this process at the atomistic scale to complement experimental measurements.

This work has benefited from the financial support of:
- the Région Aquitaine: "Advanced Materials in Aquitaine” program (2008-2011)
- the European Commission: MINOTOR project (FP7-NMP-2008-SMALL-2, 2009-2012)

Collaborations

D. Beljonne, J. Cornil (University of Mons)
L. Muccioli, G. d'Avino, C. Zanonni (University of Bologna)

 

 

Theoretical Modeling of Nonlinear Optical Switches and Sensors

Nonlinear optics (NLO) is the branch of optics that describes the behavior of light in media where the dielectric polarization responds nonlinearly to the electric field of the light. The doubling of the frequency of the incident beam, through the second harmonic generation (SHG) process, constitutes one example of NLO phenomenon that is currently exploited in optoelectronics devices in the fields of optical telecommunications, optical information processing and data storage. In particular, organic materials with commutable nonlinear optical (NLO) responses are sought for optoelectronic applications such as molecular-level memory devices with multiple storage and nondestructive capacity. Indeed, the non-resonant character of the NLO responses enables the reading of the stored information outside the absorption band, so that erasure during reading can be avoided.

Collaborations

B. Champagne (University of Namur)
V. Rodriguez, J.L. Pozzo (ISM)