Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research - An Autonomous Institution

Physics, Materials Science and Device Engineering of Solution Processed Semiconductors(Polymers, Hybrid perovskites)

Our laboratory is geared for studies that help us understand the electronic and optoelectronic processes in extended macromolecular systems. We then utilize this knowledge for device development—specifically solar cells and field-effect transistors. Besides this, we also explore bioelectronics, using soft-electronic polymers for biophysical problems, tissue engineering, and vision prosthetic elements.

Materials

Designing and characterizing new organic electronic materials forms a major part of our activity. We actively collaborate with leading chemists in this field and provide feedback in the quest to develop high-mobility polymers and small molecules, acceptor molecules for bulk heterojunction-based solar cells, and high and low-k dielectrics. We invest considerable effort in optimizing processing conditions for desired properties.

Our processing tools include spin-coating and printing methods, annealing under electric field conditions, soft-lithography approaches, and vapor deposition.

Devices

A range of photovoltaic structures and architectures have been studied in our laboratory. We are particularly interested in developing large-area devices with low manufacturing complexity.

The laboratory has pioneered polymer-based optical-field effect transistors; interfacing organic/polymer semiconductors with biological media at molecular, cellular, and system levels; large-area position sensors; stretchable-flexible light-emitting diodes; resonant cavity NIR high-speed detectors; and large organic solar cell designs.