Research

Introduction

The Advanced Materials for Energy and Electronics Group @ UW-Madison focuses on the study of advanced inorganic and organic electronic materials for photovoltaic solar energy, energy storage, and semiconductor electronics. Research in these areas will drive the engineering community for the coming decades because of mankind's rapidly growing consumption of energy and due to the continued demand for smaller, faster, and cheaper electronic devices and materials.

In particular, we have interests in the following classes of materials:

  • Small molecule organic semiconductors
  • One-dimensional nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes, semiconductor nanowires, and graphene nanoribbons
  • Inorganic-organic hybrid nanostructured composites

This research will lead to new low cost, high efficiency photovoltaic cells, better technologies for lightweight and dense energy storage, high mobility semiconductors for transistor logic and high speed communications, and improved transparent conductors for displays and photovoltaics.


Research interests
A schematic of research interests


Specific goals

1) Lower the cost of energy and its environmental footprint via innovative materials research

  • Organic photovoltaics
  • Inorganic-organic hybrid photovoltaics
  • Nanostructured energy storage

2) Nanostructured materials for high performance transistor logic and high frequency amplification

  • Graphene
  • Sorted, semiconducting CNTs
  • Nanoscale transistors
  • Thin-film flexible electronics

3) Understanding the science behind the applications

  • Exciton dynamics and charge separation in donor-acceptor interfaces
  • Organic molecule/CNT interactions in organic and aqueous solvents
  • Templating and epitaxy of organic semiconductor, thin films crystals

Images and Visual Data

Images and visual data
(Top left) Organic vapor jet printing. (Top right) Biofunctionalization of carbon nanotubes via self-assembling peptide amphiphiles. (Bottom left) Optical studies and photobleaching in semiconducting carbon nanotubes. (Bottom right) Sorting carbon nanotubes via diameter and bandgap (left) and electronic type (right) via denstiy gradient ultracentrifugation.