In a series of four articles by academic researchers in the Centre, COPE was highlighted in the June 2009 issue of the monthly magazine published by the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, Chemistry in Australia.

 

In the first article, Paul Burn introduces aspects of research undertaken in the Centre. He describes the ‘method’ of the research programs, which commences with materials design and synthesis, and then proceeds through materials characterisation to prototype fabrication and testing with them being underpinned by theory. The article highlights the range of applications being investigated in COPE such as field effect transistors, organic solar cells, sensors and OLED’s.

 

Paul Meredith discusses organic solar cells in his article, which he says are widely viewed as one of the key next-generation photovoltaic technologies. He describes the new molecular engineering approaches to create devices with improved efficiencies, stability and processibility.

 

Superconductors are examined in Ben Powell’s article. There are many unanswered questions surrounding the behaviours of organic charge transfer salts and some long-standing chemical ideas and synthetic chemistry may be the key to understanding them.   In the article he looks at unconventional superconductivity, metal-insulator transitions and ‘spin-liquids’.

 

In the final article, Shih-Chun (Lawrence) Lo looks at OLED displays and focuses on dendrimers that can be optimised to give desired opto-electronic and processing properties. Recently, researchers at COPE, in collaboration with Ifor Samuel at the University of St Andrews, UK, have developed solution processible green, red and blue phosphorescent dendrimers. These have led to highly efficient OLEDs to provide the colour spectrum necessary for full-colour displays.

 

View articles below:

 

Organic photonics and electronics by Paul Burn

New materials for next-generation organic solar cells by Paul Meredith

Synthetic routes to new physics by Ben Powell

Dendrimers: a promising new class of macromolecules for organic light emitting diodes by Shih-Chun Lo