This symposium invites contributions on emerging photon multiplication and photon conversion processes and their applications in next-generation optoelectronic and energy-harvesting technologies. Advanced photophysical mechanisms such as singlet fission, quantum cutting, and upconversion are attracting increasing attention as promising strategies to enhance light-matter interactions and potentially surpass conventional efficiency limits in optoelectronic devices. Recent progress has been achieved across a variety of material platforms, including organic semiconductors, metal-halide perovskites, nanocrystals, rare-earth-based systems, and hybrid materials. This symposium aims to bring together researchers investigating the fundamental photophysics, spectroscopy, and materials engineering underlying these processes, as well as their integration into functional devices. Contributions addressing the implementation of photon multiplication strategies in applications such as photovoltaics, photodetectors, light-emitting devices, and other emerging applications are particularly encouraged. By connecting currently fragmented communities working on related photon conversion mechanisms across different materials and applications, this symposium seeks to stimulate interdisciplinary discussions and accelerate the development of innovative photon management strategies for future technologies.
- Photon multiplication and photon conversion in emerging semiconductors (organic materials, metal-halide perovskites, nanocrystals, and rare-earth systems, etc.)
- Hybrid and nanoscale systems enabling enhanced photon conversion processes
- Materials design and engineering strategies for efficient photon multiplication
- Interfaces and energy transfer mechanisms in photon conversion systems
- Fundamental photophysics of photon multiplication processes (singlet fission, quantum cutting, upconversion, exciton multiplication)
- Spectroscopic and theoretical investigations of excited-state dynamics, energy transfer mechanisms, and photon statistics
- Integration of photon multiplication approaches in optoelectronic devices
- Applications in photovoltaics, photodetectors, light-emitting devices, and emerging quantum and photonic technologies
Zhuoying Chen is a CNRS researcher (Chargé de recherche) working in the Laboratoire de Physique et d’Etude des Matériaux (LPEM, CNRS-UMR 8213) at ESPCI Paris, a unit of Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) University in France. She received her Ph.D at Columbia University in the city of New York. After being a postdoc researcher in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, she joined CNRS in 2010. Her main research field is on optoelectronic devices (e.g. solar cells and photodetectors) based on colloidal and organic–inorganic hybrid nanomaterials synthesized from bottom-up approaches.
Antoine Kahn is a professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University in 1978. His current research interests include the structural, electronic and chemical properties of surfaces and interfaces of intrinsic and doped organic and hybrid semiconductor films. Recent work includes (i) the physics and applications of n- and p-type molecular dopants in organic thin films, (ii) organic/organic heterojunctions, (iii) transition metal oxides in organic electronics, and (iv) organo-metal perovskites. Kahn has co-authored over 380 refereed regular and review articles. He was the recipient of a Presidential Young Investigator Award (1984-85), of the Joseph Meyerhoff Visiting Professorship (2002) and of the Weston Visiting Professorship (2009-12), Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. He is a Fellow of the AVS (1999) and APS (2002). He was listed among the “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds”, Thomson Reuters 2014.
Guanying Chen is a Distinguished Professor at the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology. He received both his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Harbin Institute of Technology. He was a postdoctoral fellow and Research Associate Professor at the Institute for Lasers, Photonics, and Biophotonics, University at Buffalo, State University of New York. His research focuses on lanthanide luminescence, biophotonics, and photovoltaic devices. He has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications and has an H-index of 74.
Xiaogang LiuSean T. Roberts received his BS in Chemistry from the University of California Los Angeles in 2003 and his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute in Technology in 2010 for work using multidimensional infrared spectroscopy to study proton transport in liquid water with Andrei Tokmakoff. In 2010, Sean was awarded an NSF ACC-F postdoctoral fellowship and undertook a position at the University of Southern California where he worked in the groups of Stephen Bradforth and Alexander Benderskii on collaborative projects organized by the Center for Energy Nanoscience, a DOE supported Energy Frontier Research Center. In 2014, Sean started his independent career at the University of Texas at Austin where he leads a research group that uses and develops ultrafast spectroscopic techniques to understand how the mesoscopic ordering of semiconductor nanomaterials impacts their ability to manipulate energy and transport charge. Sean is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, was named a Cottrell Scholar in 2018, and has lead projects funded by the W. M. Keck Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Robert T. Welch Foundation, and the ACS Petroleum Research Fund. Sean has also won numerous teaching awards and currently leads an ACS and NSF-funded education and research program, GReen Energy At Texas (GREAT), that works with community colleges to increase student retention and degree attainment in the physical sciences.
Christian Seassal is Research Director at CNRS. He graduated from Insitut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon, France, in 1993, and received the PhD Degree in Condensed Matter in 1997 from Ecole Centrale de Lyon, France. He joined the CNRS in 1998, and he is now the head of the i-Lum team (Light Engineering and Conversion). He has been Deputy Director of INL (2010-2020) and Associate Editor and then Deputy Editor to Optics Express and Editor of its Energy Express supplement (2010-2020). His current research interest focus on photonic crystals, nanostructures and metasurfaces, notably for integrated photonics and solar energy. He is the author and co-author of approximately 150 papers in international journals, 80 invited conferences. He recieved the CNRS bronze medal in 2002.
Dr. Tze-Chien Sum is an Associate Professor at the Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (SPMS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) where he leads the Femtosecond Dynamics Laboratory. He is presently the Associate Dean (Research) at the College of Science. Tze-Chien received his Ph.D. in Physics from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2005, for the work in proton beam writing and ion-beam spectroscopy. His present research focuses on investigating light matter interactions; energy and charge transfer mechanisms; and probing carrier and quasi-particle dynamics in a broad range of emergent nanoscale and light harvesting systems. Tze-Chien received a total of 11 teaching awards from NUS and NTU, including the coveted Nanyang Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2006 and the 2010 SPMS Teaching Excellence Honour Roll Award. Most recently, he received the 2013 SPMS Young Researcher Award; the Institute of Physics Singapore 2014 World Scientific Medal and Prize for Outstanding Physics Research; the 2014 Nanyang Award for Research Excellence (Team); and the 2015 Chemical Society of Japan Asian International Symposium Distinguished Lectureship Award. More information can be found at http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/tzechien/spms/index.html
Baoquan SunProf. Dr. Baoquan (Sam) Sun is a full professor (PI) in the Institute of Functional and Soft Materials (FUNSOM) of Soochow University. He received his PhD in Chemistry from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2002, after serving as a postdoctoral researcher. In Prof. Friend's group at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University and in Dr. Klimov's group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, he was appointed to a full professorship at Soochow University in Suzhou, China, in 2008. His main research fields are materials synthesis and the physical characterization of semiconductor nanostructures, including conductive inks, colloidal quantum dots, nanostructured silicon, and their applications in solar cells, light-emitting diodes, and moisture-triggered electricity generation. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers Nat. Comm., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., JACS, Nano Lett., ACS Nano, and Adv. Mater holds over thirty patents. Moreover, “SCI” total citation is more than 23000 times, and the H-index is 80. In addition, his work has been highlighted by Nature Climate Change, Nature Photonics, The Times, the Guardian, Xinhua Net, and Phys. Org et al. over 200 médias. He has been awarded the Chinese Most Cited Researchers by Elsevier Scopus for “his Exceptional Contribution in Materials Science” since 2018. He won the first prize of the Jiangsu Science and Technology Award in 2017. In 2019, he was awarded the National Talent Program. Currently, he is an advisory board member of PSS - Physica Status Solidi (WILEY) and Nanomaterials.
Mark W.B. Wilson (he/him) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, where his team strives to understand the synthesis, structure, and photophysics of colloidal quantum dots (and functionalized, hybrid architectures) to advance their use in photonic & optoelectronic applications. A present focus is advancing nanocrystal-sensitized triplet-fusion upconversion. His first degrees were in Engineering Physics and History at Queen’s University (Kingston). He next received a PhD in Physics (2012) from the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Prof. Sir Richard Friend. Then, as a member of the Centre for Excitonics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he pursued postdoctoral studies (2012-2016) with Prof. Moungi Bawendi (Chemistry), before starting his independent career.