3:00–4:00 pm
Please join us:
Mark Feuer DiTusa’s PhD Thesis Defense
Tuesday, March 1st, 2022 at 3:00 PM CDT
UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF MOLECULAR ORDER AND MICROSTRUCTURE OF DOPED SEMICONDUCTING POLYMERS ON CHARGE TRANSPORT
Molecular doping is a method used to increase the charge carrier concentration within organic semiconductors to increase their conductivity. In an analogue to atomistic doping of inorganic semiconductors, in which an atom of the host material is replaced by an atom with one more or one fewer electron, molecular doping introduces larger molecules that react with the semiconducting backbone, typically by a redox reaction, which either introduces a hole or electron into the semiconducting system. However, the analogue to atomistic doping breaks when considering the frequency of impurities, which is much more frequent for molecular dopants. This frequency of impurities threatens to disrupt features that lead to efficient transport of charge carriers, such as polymer “tie” chains that bridge domains of high mobility through domains of low mobility. In this thesis, we study how the order and microstructure of semiconducting polymers affect the progression of doping and vice versa, and how these effects determine charge transport within our materials. Our results establish a method for studying novel polymer-dopant pairings to determine how to optimize conductivity after introducing molecular dopants.
Committee Members:
Shrayesh Patel (Chair)
Paul Nealey
Sidney Nagel
Thomas Witten
Mark will be a fellow at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine as part of the Christine Mirzayan Science & Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship Program, hosted by the Board on Gulf Education and Engagement. There, he will work on programs to promote scientific education and literacy in the Gulf of Mexico region."