Project R-12273

Strong light-matter coupling for organic electronics. (Research)

Organic semiconductors are an emerging class of materials with significant potential for future photonic and optoelectronic applications due to their versatility of processing, tunability of electronic and optical properties by small variations of the molecular structure, flexibility of the formed films, and their non-toxicity. Organic light-emitting diodes are already a commercial product used in displays, while organic solar cells and optical sensors have seen rapid developments in the latest years. These types of organic optoelectronic devices consist of a stack of organic thin films with a total thickness in the 100-500 nm range, which is of the same order as the wavelength of the photons these devices interact with. In this project, we will tune these light-matter interactions by manipulation of the device architecture: We will incorporate distributed Bragg reflectors consisting of multi-layers stacks of metal oxides, as well as (semi-)transparent metal electrodes in order to achieve the regime of strong light-matter coupling. The resulting formation of hybrid light-matter states will be probed using highly sensitive spectroscopic and time-resolved measurement techniques and are expected to severely affect the efficiency of the photon-to-electron, photon-to-photon, and electron-to-photon conversion processes. A thorough understanding of the strong coupling mechanism will be obtained and is expected to lead to exciting applications such as low threshold organic lasers and all-optical logic.

01 September 2021 - 31 August 2025