3 Organic Electronics and Photovoltaics

Organic semiconductors have received great attention since 1987 when organic light-emitting devices were invented by leading scientists at Kodak USA. After more than 30 years of R&D and commercialization efforts world-wide, we are now witnessing a wide range of OLED displays in consumer products ranging from mobile phones to 77-inch TVs. The particular advantages of OLEDs are their thin construction, large viewing angle, color gamut and high energy conversion efficiency. OLEDs consist of a sequence of thin organic semiconductor layers placed in-between two metallic electrodes. Organic semiconductors have equally gained attention as strong light absorber and charge transport materials in organic solar cells, with which flexible PV modules can be built. In recent years, organic semiconductors have also been key to the ground-breaking hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite solar cell technology, which is the hottest emerging photovoltaics technology and shows great potential for LED and memristor applications, too. Luminescent quantum dots are important ingredients in novel displays and thus are also subject of our research. Further into the invisible range of electromagnetic waves, terahertz photonics is a growing technological field for non-invasive diagnostics applications. The ICP carries out R&D in the field of OLED, OPV, perovskite PV and non-linear optical crystals for terahertz photonics technology by employing multi-physics computer models and devising novel measurement systems. In the laboratory of the ICP, we fabricate OLEDs and novel solar cells on a small scale for R&D purposes and have set up a novel terahertz photonics measurement system for diagnostic purposes. We focus on device and material characterization methods by a combination of advanced measurement and simulation technology and have gained experience with machine learning. This chapter gives an overview on ongoing R&D projects carried out in this interdisciplinary research field of the ICP.

M. Auer M. Battaglia E. Comi F. Ebadi Garjan M. Jazbinsek

C. Kirsch G. Kissling E. Knapp K. Pernstich U. Puc

M. Regnat B. Ruhstaller A. Schiller W. Tress S. Züfle