Nanoengineered donor-acceptor organic semiconductor materials and film morphologies for printable photovoltaics have formed a significant focus area for this sub-category of future clean energy technologies. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) record of bulk heterojunction organic photovoltaics (OPV) reached 19% in 2021, and alongside this achievement eco-friendly processed nanoparticle OPV has made a surprising leap to the 10% efficiency threshold. New interest in engineering nanoparticles for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution has facilitated parallel advancements in the same materials for photovoltaics. This symposium will focus on recent advances in nanoengineered materials and morphologies for printable photovoltaics, with a particular focus on non-fullerene acceptors and green sustainable processing. Nanoengineering strategies are only as good as the microscopy techniques that can confirm them, and hence a second arm of this symposium will include the associated advanced characterisation tools used by the research field.
- Structure-function relationships in organic nanomaterials for PV
- Nanoengineering strategies for PV
- Synchrotron NEXAFS, STXM, laminography and RSoXS studies
- Non-synchrotron techniques, including STEM-EDX, EELS and electron diffraction
Dr Natalie Holmes leads a research team at the University of Sydney Faculty of Engineering developing nanostructured materials for organic electronics and biomedical devices. Materials engineering for these fields has been the focus of her research over the past decade, and takes her each year to international synchrotron facilities to measure the precise nanostructure of these cutting-edge functional materials. Natalie holds a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Newcastle (2016), and is an Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) scholar. She has led research projects in nanostructuring materials for eco-friendly coated solar cells at Karlstad University (Sweden) and nanostructured thin-film devices for electronic biosensors and solar cells at the University of Newcastle.
Dr. Habil. Martin Brinkmann (07.10.1971 in Mulhouse, France)
Directeur de Recherche CNRS
Institut Charles Sadron
CNRS Université de Strasbourg
23 rue du loess
67034 Strasbourg – France
h=45, 137 publications
Scientific Career
Since 2013 Director of Research CNRS
2002. Invited Researcher EPFL, group of L. Zuppiroli
2000 -2013 Senior Scientist CNRS
1999-2000 Postdoctoral researcher MIT, Cambridge, USA
1997-1999 Postdoctoral researcher at CNR Bologna, Italy
1994-1997 PhD, University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg
Scientific Focus
Structure and morphology in thin organic films,
Organic semiconductors,
Transmission Electron Microscopy,
Crystallization and orientation of polymer and molecular materials,
Growth control in organic thin films. Polymer Thermoelectric Materials.
Scientific Awards
2007 CNRS Bronze Medal
2011 Prize of Groupe Français des Polymères – Société Française de Physique
Management activities
2013-2020 SYCOMMOR Group leader, ICS
2018-now Deputy-director of Doctoral School of Physics and Chemical Physics
ED182, Strasbourg
2017-now. IC FRC and GFP member
2018-now: Coordinator ANR ANISOTHERM
Supervision:
12 PhD students (Bruno Schmaltz, Christelle Vergnat, Navaphun Kayunkid, Lucia Hartmann, Alexandru Sarbu, Amer Hamidi-Sakr, Morgane Diebold, Vishnu Vijajakumar, Marion Brosset, Yuhan Zong, Shubhradip Guchait),
7 postdocs (Jean-François Moulin, Sirapat Pratontep, Navaphun Kayunkid, Uttiya Sureeporn, Nicolas Crespo-Monteiro, Maria Girleanu, Laure Biniek)
Teaching “Structure and Growth of Conjugated Polymer and Molecular Materials” , Master polymer Science (2010-2012), Strasbourg.
Reviewing: Macromolecules, Chemistry of Materials, JACS, Advanced Functional Materials, Advanced Materials, J. Mater. Chem. C
Project reviewer for ANR, DFG, NSF, Swiss national Science foundation
Five most important publications
1) M. Brinkmann, J.-C. Wittmann: Orientation of regio-regular poly(3-hexylthiophene) by directional solidification: a simple method to reveal the semi-crystalline structure of a conjugated polymer, Adv. Mat. 2006, 18, 860.
2) N. Kayunkid, S. Uttiya and M. Brinkmann: Structural model of regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) obtained by electron diffraction analysis, Macromolecules 2010, 43, 4961.
3) M. Brinkmann, E. Gonthier, S. Bogen, K. Tremmel, S. Ludwigs, M. Hufnagel, M. Sommer: Segregated versus mixed stacking of bithiophene and naphthalene bisimide units in highly oriented films of an n-type polymeric semiconductor, ACS Nano, 2012, 6, 10319.
4) A. Hamidi Sakr, L. Biniek, S. Fall, M. Brinkmann: Precise control of crystal size in highly oriented regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) thin films prepared by high temperature rubbing: correlations with optical properties and charge transport, Adv. Funct. Mat. 2016, 26, 408.
5) Vijayakumar, V.; Zhong, Y.; Untilova, V.; Bahri, M.; Herrmann, L.; Biniek, L.; Leclerc, N.; Brinkmann, M. Bringing Conducting Polymers to High Order: Toward Conductivities beyond 105 S cm−1 and Thermoelectric Power Factors of 2 mW m−1 K−2. Advanced Energy Materials 2019, 9, 1900266.
Carmen Ruiz HerreroDr. Cheng Wang is a Physicist Staff Scientist at the ALS, LBNL. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in physics from Jilin University, China in 2002, and received his Ph.D. in physics in North Carolina State University advised by Prof. Harald Ade in 2008. After graduation, he joined the ALS, LBNL where he led the development of Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering for soft materials and led the construction of the world’s first RSoXS beamline at ALS beamline 11.0.1.2. He is a leading expert on the development of soft X-ray metrology and utilize advanced synchrotron x-ray probes such as X-ray scattering, microscopy and spectroscopy to elucidate the morphology, chemistry, and interfacial structure of broad range of complex materials.
Guillaume Wantz graduated from the School of Chemistry and Physics of Bordeaux (ENSCPB) in 2001 including a thesis work at Philips Research (Eindhoven, NL) on ink-jet printing. He received his Ph.D. in Electronics Engineering from the University of Bordeaux in 2004 working on Polymer Light Emitting Diodes. He was Assistant Professor at the University of Bordeaux working on Organic Field Effect Transistors with research stays at Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada). In 2006, he was appointed as tenure Associate Professor at the Bordeaux Institute of Technology (Bordeaux INP). He is Professeur des Universités since 2021. His research interest is on Organic Electronics with a focus on polymer photovoltaic solar cells (OPV). He was invited-professor at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) in Spring 2012 and at Univ. of Massachusetts (Amherst, USA) in Fall 2014. He has been appointed at the “Institut Universitaire de France” (IUF Paris) in 2016. Since 2017, he is Associate Editor for the journal “Materials Chemistry Frontiers” (RSC). He is co-founder of Héole, a company developing flexible OPV products including solar-powered sails for yachting, a solar zeppelin and some BIPV flexible OPV products. To date, he has published 125 research papers in peer-reviewed international journals and issued 7 patents (h = 37 – 6000 citations – source Google Scholar).
Benjamin Watts is a beamline scientist at the PolLux scanning transmission soft X-ray spectro-microscope (STXM) specialising in the materials analysis of soft matter. He obtained a BSc (Professional) in Physics, with Honours, and a PhD in Physics from the University of Newcastle, Australia, before working as a post-doctoral researcher with North Carolina State University (permanently stationed at the Advanced Light Source, Berkeley) in the USA and then moving to PSI. Details of the interactions between soft X-ray light and organic materials has been a continuing theme throughout both his university research and later career.
Stefania Zappia is a researcher at the "Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie Chimiche “Giulio Natta” (SCITEC)" of "Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)" in Milano (taly) since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences and Technologies from the University of Genova (Italy) in 2013, working on synthesis and characterization of organic and metal-organic hybrid materials for sensoric and photovoltaic applications. She then worked as a Research Fellow at "Istituto per lo Studio delle Macromolecole" of CNR in Milan from 2013 to 2018. She works on the synthesis of low band gap conjugated polymers for optoelectronic applications through bulk and flow synthesis, and on the synthesis of advanced polymeric and hybrid materials for CO2 recovery. She developed a strong expertise in the design and synthesis of amphiphilic rod-coil block copolymers for the functionalization of inorganic nanoparticles and/or for the preparation of polymeric nanoparticles processable from aqueous media for photovoltaic and/or biological applications.