Short Programs

Organic and Nanostructured Electronics: Physics and Applications

This course is currently only offered as a custom program. The below description should be taken as an example of content and can be tailored to meet company needs. If you have been thinking about a customized course for your group of 25 or more, please review additional information on the Custom Programs page.

Description  |  Learning Objectives  |  Specific Knowledge  |  Broader Perspective  | 
Hands-On Laboratory  |  Topics  |  Participants' Comments  |  Instructors  |  Updates

Description

Over the last decade, enormous strides have been made in the field of organic electronics. A first generation of visible organic light emitting devices has been commercialized. Optically pumped lasers have been demonstrated at UV, visible, and IR wavelengths. Photodetectors with collection efficiencies as high as 75%, and solar cells with power conversion efficiencies as high as 3% have been reported. Printed organic thin film transistor circuits containing hundreds of active gates have been operated at frequencies exceeding 1 kHz. As a whole, this work represents an extraordinary technological achievement on an entirely new materials platform, but it is just a beginning of what is to come. With the advent of techniques for manipulating materials at the nanoscale and development of manufacturing methods for devising large area nanostructures, further advancements are envisioned.

This course will review basic concepts underlying the design, fabrication, and operation of three dominant types of organic electronic devices: light emitting devices (OLEDs), photosensitive devices (solar cells and photodetectors), and field effect transistors (OFETs). We will also discuss, but devote less time to, organic lasers, organic memories, and chemical sensors. The course aims to present a broad and practical survey of the field and to immerse you in the broad field of organic materials. As a sub-class of nanostructured solids, organic thin films exemplify challenges of the practical nanotechnologies. Many concepts presented in the class are directly transferable to a broader field of nanostructured materials.

The course begins with an overview of organic semiconductors, their structures, general physical and electronic properties. Electronic structure of a single organic molecule will be used as a guide to the electronic behavior of organic aggregate structures. A brief discussion of methods for forming organic thin film structures will set the stage for the detailed discussion of active devices.

In describing organic photosensitive devices we will first introduce the concept of an exciton, the molecular or aggregate unit excitation that fundamentally governs the operation of all organic optoelectronic devices. The effects of exciton diffusion, dissociation, and luminescence will be examined in the photogeneration process in an organic heterojunction photovoltaic cell, and an organic multilayer photodetector. Description of start-up company efforts to commercialize organic electrochemical cells and inorganic-nanorod/polymer-organic composite cells will conclude this section of the course.

The course center stage will be given to organic light emitting device technologies. We will start by reviewing human perception of color as the guide to the design of all display technologies. Through historical review we will introduce the basic OLED structure and operating characteristics. These will then be used as a platform to examine charge carrier transport in organic thin films and carrier injection at electrode/organic interfaces. Discussion will lead us through the description of transparent, inverted, and flexible OLEDs, TOLEDs, OILEDs, and FOLEDs, respectively. The electrophosphorescence process will be highlighted as the culprit for today's record efficiencies in doped phosphorescent OLED structures (PH-OLEDs). Advanced concepts of light guiding in OLEDs, microcavity effects, solid state solvation, and exciton dynamics in disordered organic films will only be alluded to for their technological significance. Description of the electronic driving schemes for OLED displays will motivate discussion of manufacturing methods for full color display panels including evaporative deposition and printing schemes. As the above discussion will primarily focus on molecular OLEDs, this section will conclude by highlighting physical and manufacturing differences in polymer LED technology and the emerging technology of quantum dot LEDs (QD LEDs) that hybridize organic materials with inorganic nanocrystal quantum dots.

In the organic FET section of the course, we will describe device structure and operation. Emphasis will be placed on understanding basic device physics including: the critical field effect process by which the conductance of the device is "gated"; the two major regimes of FET operation (linear and saturation); the elementary current-voltage equations and the extraction of important device parameters such as charge mobility, on-to-off ratio, threshold voltage and sub-threshold slope. State-of-the-art accomplishments in circuit design for organic electronics will also be highlighted.

Throughout the course, the themes which will permeate all device discussions are the microstructure of the semiconductor films, the physical origin of the relevant optical and electronic processes, uniqueness of the organic material set and its potential to change manufacturing paradigms in 21st century electronics.

Learning Objectives

1. Define the basic concepts underlying the design, fabrication, and operation of three dominant types of organic electronic devices: light emitting devices, photosensitive devices, and field effect transistors.
2. Describe organic memories, lasers, and chemical sensors.
3. Comprehend the basic physics underlying device operation.
4. Examine the state of the art of organic electronics technology.
5. Analyze chief technical challenges and critical materials issues.
6. Describe basic molecular electronics.
7. Differentiate the fundamental benefits and limitations of the organic materials
8. Investigate new manufacturing paradigms enabled through use of organic materials.
9. Evaluate a sample vision of the ubiquity of organic electronics in the 21st century.
10. Compare some successful start-up companies and their brief lessons.

Specific knowledge

• Operation fundamentals of organic LEDs, FETs, solar cells and photodetectors, memories, lasers, and chemical sensors
• Basic physics underlying device operation
• State of the art of organic electronics technology
• Chief technical challenges
• Critical materials issues
• Basic Molecular Electronics

Broader perspective

• Fundamental benefits and limitations of the organic materials
• New manufacturing paradigms enabled through use of organic materials
• A sample vision of the ubiquity of organic electronics in the 21st century
• Stories of successful start-up companies and their brief lessons

Hands-on Laboratory

Vacuum-Deposited Organic LEDs - You will make an OLED from scratch in one afternoon

Topics

Organic Materials
Electronic/Optical Processes
- in Single Molecules
- in Molecular Assemblies
Devices and Applications
- Organic LEDs
- Lasers
- Solar Cells/Photodetectors
- Xerography
- Transistors
- Memory Cells
Molecular Electronics
Nano- and Micro-Patterning
- Technology of OLEDs

Participants' Comments

Scientist from Degussa GmbH
"It's a well rounded course with clear take-home messages. The emphasis is given to the application and engineering of the systems, which makes the topic very approachable."

Fellow at Ciba Specialty Chemicals Inc.
"Outstanding. Excellent opportunity to interact with two leading researchers in the field and also spend half a day in their laboratory observing how select nanodevices are constructed. A very very impressive laboratory research infrastructure to support the research."

Marine Engineer Lead at Alion Science & Technology
"The course focused on very specific subject matter and cutting edge research and the being able to obtain such a level of access to the subject matter experts and first-class facilities is exciting and rare."

Instructors

Vladimir Bulović joined the faculty of MIT in July 2000 where he is now the Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, leading the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory, co-directing the MIT-ENI Solar Frontiers Center. As the MIT Energy Initiative council member Bulović is co-heading the Energy Education Task Force and co-directing the MIT Energy Studies Minor. In 2008 he was named the Class of 1960 Faculy Fellow, and in 2009 he was named the Van Buren Hansford (1937) - Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow.

Bulovic received electrical engineering B.S.E. in 1991 from Princeton University, M.S. in 1993 from Columbia University and Ph.D in 1998 from Princeton University. Just prior to joining MIT, he was a Senior Scientist and Project Head of Strategic Technology Development at Universal Display Corporation (UDC). At UDC he worked on the application of organic materials to LEDs for full color flat panel displays and thin film photovoltaics for solar cell and detector applications. Prior to UDC he worked in Princeton's POEM Center as a graduate researcher (1993-1998) and research associate (1998-1999) participating in a series of projects examining the optical and electrical properties of vacuum deposited amorphous and crystalline molecular organic thin films and devices. For his M.S. degree, Prof. Bulovic worked at Columbia University's Microelectronics Sciences Laboratory (1991-1993), where he examined image-potential states and resonances on metal surfaces utilizing nonlinear two-photon photoemission spectroscopy.

At MIT his research interests include studies of physical properties of organic and organic/inorganic nanocrystal composite thin films and structures, and development of novel optoelectronic organic and hybrid nano-scale devices. His papers and patents cover the areas of organic and nanostructured light emitting diodes, lasers, photovoltaics, photodetectors, chemical sensors, and programmable memories, majority of which have been licensed and utilized by both start-up and multinational companies.

Together with ONE-Lab alum Dr. Seth Coe-Sullivan, Bawendi group alum Dr. Jonny Steckel, and Sloan school graduate Greg Moeler, in 2004 Prof. Bulović founded QD Vision, Inc. of Watertown MA which is focused on development of quantum dot optolectronics. Together with ONE-Lab alums Dr. Conor Madigan and Dr. Jianglong (Gerry) Chen, Prof. Marty Schmidt and Dr. Valerie Leblanc, in 2007 Prof. Bulovic founded Kateeva, Inc. (formerly named TJet Technologies, Inc.) of Menlo Park CA which is focused on development of printed organic electronics.

Prof. Bulović is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist and Engineers, the National Science Foundation Career Award, The Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching, Eta Kappa Nu Honor Society Award for Outstanding Teaching, and was named to Technology Review TR100 List.

Click here to view information on Prof. Bulovic's Lab.
Click here to view Prof. Bulovic's RLE video profile at MIT TechTV.

Marc Baldo is the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at M.I.T. Prof. Baldo received his B. Eng. (Electrical Engineering) from the University of Sydney in 1995 with first class honors and university medal, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Professor Baldo's research interests include electrical and exciton transport in organic materials, energy transfer, metal-organic contacts, heterogeneous integration of biological materials, and novel organic transistors.

Updates

• Turning windows into powerplants-- read an MIT news article featuring work by Professor Bulovic.
• Graphene electrodes for organic solar cells--read a recent MIT news article about exciting new research Professor Bulovic is doing with organic solar cells.
• Energy researchers find Obama an eager student--Professors Baldo and Bulovic demonstrated some of their research for President Obama during his visit to campus on October 23, 2009.