Students: Russell Kim
Project: P3HT-based Organic Field-Effect Transistors | View Poster (PDF)
Major: Chemical Engineering
Advisor: Elsa Reichmanis
Abstract
With the ongoing drive for high performance semiconductors, attention is being turned towards organic semiconductors. They are often cheaper, more flexible, and bio-compatible. Among all the organic semiconductors, a classical pair is poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). P3HT is a semiconducting material that has a conjugated backbone with an adaptive π-π stacking. Such structured regularity in its thiophene rings and hexyl side chains create an effective channel for charge transport. OFET, on the other hand, is a semiconducting device that has the capability to serve as flexible electronics, such as wearable and biomedical devices. Together, they draw out promising charge transport properties. The deposition process of P3HT can be done in many ways, for example, spin coating. To characterize how well P3HT performs under different coating techniques, one can use Ultraviolet-Visible Light spectroscopy, commonly called UV-Vis. UV-Vis provides information on the transition peaks of P3HT, ultimately describing how well it adapts to its conjugated nature. Experimental results have shown that spin coating is able to produce consistent results with respectable charge carrier mobility, averaging 0.03 cm2 V-1 s-1. Corroborated by UV-Vis spectroscopy, spin-coated P3HT exhibits transition peaks in 605 nm and 550 nm, representing 0-0 and 0-1 transitions, respectively. These findings provide fundamental insights that contribute to the future development and commercialization of not just P3HT and OFET, but more importantly, the whole semiconducting field.
About Russell Kim
Russell B. Kim is currently completing his final semester at Lehigh University. Hailing from State College, PA, he has spent his last three years pursuing a degree in chemical engineering, as well as minors in both business and polymer science engineering. Russell began working with Professor Elsa Reichmanis and one of her many graduate students, Mengting Sun, since the start of his junior year. His primary project involves the characterization of charge transports, facilitated through various coating methods of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT), on organic field-effect transistors (OFET). In the past summer, he spent his days as an intern at ABEC, a multinational biotechnology company specializing in customized bioreactors and fermenters, focusing on product improvement and cost reduction. Russell is currently heading towards a pursuit for a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at either Georgia Institute of Technology or Carnegie Mellon University.