Organic semiconductors have the potential to produce low-cost thermoelectric materials that can easily be processed into thin films with mechanical properties that are amenable to wearables and waste heat capture in consumer products. As yet, the thermopower of n- and p-type doped organic semiconductors is too low for commercialization and lower than that of inorganic semiconductors. Organic thermoelectrics has seen a surge in research interest in recent years and the progress in terms of performance has been encouraging. This progress has sparked the interest from a wide range of disciplines.
This symposium invites contributions from chemistry, physics, materials science, and related disciplines to advance the field of organic thermoelectrics. Contributions that address aspects of engineering and processing are also explicitly welcomed.
- Modelling and theory of doping, charge transport and thermoelectrics
- Novel chemical structures for efficient thermoelectrics
- Organic/inorganic and hybrid thermoelectrics
- Dopants and Doping strategies
- Thermal transport
- Flexible and conformable thermoelectrics
- N-type materials for organic thermoelectrics
- Composites and blends for hybrid thermoelectrics
Jan Anton Koster received his PhD in Physics from the University of Groningen in 2007. After his PhD, he worked as a postdoc at the universities of Cambridge and Eindhoven. Having obtained a VENI grant for organic solar cell modelling, he moved back to Groningen to continue his work on organic semiconductors. In 2013 he became a tenure-track assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor (with ius promovendi) at the University of Groningen in 2017. Currently, his main research interests include hybrid perovskite solar cells, organic solar cells and organic thermoelectrics.
Mariano Campoy Quiles´s research is devoted to the understanding and development of solution processed semiconductors for energy and optoelectronic applications. He and his team have built substantial research efforts in two application areas, solar photovoltaic (light to electric) and thermoelectric (heat to electric) energy conversion based on organic and hybrid materials. He studied physics at the Univesity of Santiago de Compostela, obtained his PhD in experimental physics from Imperial College London, and since 2008 he leads his team at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona.
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Thuc-Quyen Nguyen is a professor in the Center for Polymers and Organic Solids and the Chemistry & Biochemistry Department at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She received her Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2001 under the supervision of Professor Benjamin Schwartz. Her thesis focused on photophysics of conducting polymers. She was a research associate in the Department of Chemistry and the Nanocenter at Columbia University working with Professors Louis Brus and Colin Nuckolls on molecular self-assembly, nanoscale characterization and molecular electronics. She also spent time at IBM Research Center at T. J. Watson (Yorktown Heights, NY) working with Richard Martel and Phaedon Avouris. Her current research interests are structure-function-property relationships in organic semiconductors, sustainable semiconductors, doping in organic semiconductors, interfaces in optoelectronic devices, bioelectronics, and device physics of OPVs, photodetectors, and electrochemical transistors. Recognition for her research includes 2005 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, 2006 NSF CAREER Award, 2007 Harold Plous Award, 2008 Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, the 2009 Alfred Sloan Research Fellows, 2010 National Science Foundation American Competitiveness and Innovation Fellows, 2015 Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Award, 2016 Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2015-2019 World’s Most InfluentialScientific Minds; Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics, 2019 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2023 Wilhelm Exner Medal from Austria, 2023 Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, 2023 de Gennes Prize in Materials Chemistry from the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2023 Elected Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, 2024 Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, and 2025 ACS Henry H. Storch Award in Energy Chemistry.
Shannon Yee