Today’s optoelectronic devices are based on crystalline inorganic materials, but their negative environmental impacts caused by the way they are fabricated, used and disposed of call for the search for alternatives. The use of printed, semi-transparent and eco-friendly materials (such as organic semiconductors) that can be unobtrusively integrated with the environment is a promising route towards a sustainable future. In this talk, I will discuss recent advances in the development of organic optoelectronic devices for solar cell and photodetection applications. I will particularly highlight my recent work that reveals the endothermic nature of electron-hole separation in efficient organic solar cells, thus setting out the science that allows excitonic solar cells to match silicon performance levels. Furthermore, the possibility of applying similar optical methods to study electronic processes and control quantum states in novel nanoscale and low dimensional systems will be discussed.

Dr. Philip Chow received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Cambridge working with Prof. Richard Friend at the Cavendish Laboratory. He was awarded the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) postdoctoral fellowship in 2016 to work at the University of Tokyo. He joined HKUST as Research Assistant Professor in 2017. His research focuses on the study of optoelectronic processes in novel semiconducting materials and their device applications.