News

– 2021 –

February

• Sean has a new editorial entitled From “old” photons to “new” photons: advancing new research in photonics and energy in the Journal of Photonics for Energy.

– 2020 –

August

• Sean and Jake gave a Webinar for the MRS OnDemand Webinar Series on Organic semiconductors for brain-inspired computing.
• Jake Perez published his paper on Neuromorphic-based Boolean and reversible logic circuits from organic electrochemical transistors in the Materials Research Society Bulletin special issue on Organic Semiconductors for Brain Inspired Computing. Congratulations Jake!
  The article appeared alongside an overview article in the same issue that Sean contributed to on Organic neuromorphic devices: Past, present, and future challenges.

July

• As of July 1, Sean is the new Editor-in-Chief of the SPIE Journal of Photonics for Energy, as announced in the SPIE Press Release. Thank you to the SPIE leadership and staff and the JPE Asociate Editors for this opportunity.

June

• Lauren Hurley, a B.S. student in physics at Villanova University, has joined the group as an REU student this summer. She will be working remotely on modeling of perovskite photovoltaic device physics. Welcome Lauren!

May

• Jun Nishida published his article Heterogeneous Cation–Lattice Interaction and Dynamics in Triple-Cation Perovskites Revealed by Infrared Vibrational Nanoscopy in ACS Energy Letters as part of our collaborative work with the Raschke Group.

April

• Jake Perez succesfully defended his M.S. Thesis entitled "Organic Electrochemical Transistors for Use in Neuromorphic Computing: Boolean and Reversible Logic Gate Solutions".  Congratulations Jake!

March

• Sean and colleague Prof. Juan Restrepo of the Department of Applied Mathematics were awarded a CU RIO Seed Grant on the topic of "Organic Reservoir Computing: A Joint Theory-Experiment Study".
• Vesta Zhelyaskova was unfortunately not able to give her talk on Improving Crystallite Size and Orientation in Organic Semiconductor Thin Films using PDMS-Assisted Crystallization at the MRS March Meeting due to its cancellation. However, her talk can be found on the conference virtual site.

– 2019 –

December

• Sean gave an invited talk at the MRS Fall 2019 Meeting in Boston, on the topic of "Photonic Upconversion in Organic Nanoparticles via Cooperative Energy Pooling", as part of Symposium SB05 : Light–Matter Interactions at the Interface with Living Cells, Tissues and Organisms.

November

• Joshua Brown successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Efficient Computational Methods for the Study of Charge Transport in Disordered Organic Semiconductors".  Congratulations Dr. Brown!

September

• The group is awarded an NSF DMR grant on "Multidimensional Tracking of Local Environment-Affected Transport Pathways in Perovskite Solar Cells" in collaboration with the Siemens group at the University of Denver.
• Group member Cody Sharp graduated and has taken a position at the company TandemPV.  Congratulations Cody!

June

• Sean gave a talk at the 1st Workshop on Neuromorphic Organic Devices in Ferrara Italy, entitled "Device Physics and Fast Operation of Organic Electrochemical Devices".

January

• Sean gave a public talk for the Saturday Physics Series entitled "Powered by the Sun: Turning Light into Electricity with Photovoltaic Cells".
• Graduate student in physics Vesta Zhelyaskova joined the group to work on organic superconductivity and related phenomena.  Welcome Vesta!

– 2018 –

December

• Daniel Dessau of physics, Sean Shaheen of electrical, computer and energy engineering, Charles Musgrave of chemical and biological engineering, and co-PI’s Gang Cao and Josef Michl won a three-year, $1 million award from the W.M. Keck Foundation for “High Temperature Superconductivity in Organic Solids.”
• A seed grant in the amount of $50 K is awarded from the CUbit Quantum Initiative for the project "Room Temperature Coherence and Condensation in Exciton-Polariton States: Toward Practical Quantum Phenomena in Cavity-Coupled Perovskite Materials" in collaboration with the Raschke group in the physics.

September

• Dak's paper on Roll-to-Roll Printing of Perovskite Solar Cells was published in ACS Energy Letters.  Congtratulations Dak!
• Joshua's path to engineering at CU Boulder is highlighted in a story for the ECEE Department: Joshua's path from Malawi to Boulder.
• Sean is awarded an NSF project on Authentic Research Experiences for Teachers (ARETe).  A press release was published here.

April

• Sean Dunfield's paper on "Curtailing Perovskite Processing Limitations via Lamination at the Perovskite/Perovskite Interface" was published in ACS Energy Letters. Congratulations Sean!

March 

• Dak's paper on "Degradation of Highly Alloyed Metal Halide Perovskite Precursor Inks: Mechanism and Storage Solutions" was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. Congratulations Dak!

February 

• Joshua's paper on "Introducing correlations into carrier transport simulations of disordered materials through seeded nucleation: Impact on density of states, carrier mobility, and carrier statistics" was published in the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. Congratulations Joshua!

– 2017 –

November 

• Alex's paper on "Molecular weight dependence of carrier mobility and recombination rate in neat P3HT films" was published in the Journal of Polymer Science Part B: Polymer Physics. Congratulations Alex!

September 

• Dak's paper on "High Performance Flexible Perovskite Solar Cells on Ultra-Thin Glass: Implications of the TCO" was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. Congratulations Dak!

July 

• Sean was awarded one of this year's Provost Faculty Achievement Awards for his group's work on organic solar cells and photonics. Thank you to Provost Moore!

  

• Sean, along with Dr. Shaw Ketels of the ECEE department, was awarded one of this year's Chancellor's Award for Excellence in STEM Education. Thank you to Chancellor DiStefano!

• Jake's paper on "Influence of disorder on transfer characteristics of organic electrochemical transistors" was published in Applied Physics Letters. Congratulations Jake!

June 

• Congratulations to Daniel Weingarten for successfully defending his Ph.D. Dissertation on "Experimental Verification of Photon Upconversion via Cooperative Energy Pooling". Great job Dr. Weingarten!

May 

• Our paper on "Role of Crystallization in the Morphology of Polymer:Non-fullerene Acceptor Bulk Heterojunctions" was published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. This work details the mechanisms of charge generation and transport in organic photovoltaics based on non-fullerene electron acceptors. It was a collaboration with the group of Prof. Michael Chabinyc at UC Santa Barbara and Prof. Alan Sellinger at the Colorado School of Mines. Thanks to everyone involved!

March 

• Daniel's paper on "Experimental demonstration of photon upconversion via cooperative energy pooling" was published in the journal Nature Communications. Congratulations Daniel!

January 

• Dak's paper on "Thermal engineering of FAPbI3 perovskite material via radiative thermal annealing and in situ XRD" was published in the journal Nature Communications. Congratulations Dak!

– 2016 –

October 

• Alex Dixon successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Charge Carrier Dynamics in Solution Processed Solar Cells". Congratulations Alex!

August 

• Robert Nawrocki's paper on "A Mini Review of Neuromorphic Architectures and Implementations" was published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, in collaboration with Prof. Richard Voyles at Purdue University. Congratulations Robert!


• Visiting scholar Aniket Rana has arrived from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Delhi, India. He is supported by the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) and will be working on OPV materials and devices. Welcome Aniket!


• Zefram's paper on "Switchable diffractive optics using patterned PEDOT:PSS based electrochromic thin-films" was published in Organic Electronics , in collaboration with the McLeod group and with Dr. Malik Hakook and Dr. Devatha Nair from the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.


• Jake's paper on "Microsecond Response in Organic Electrochemical Transistors: Exceeding the Ionic Speed Limit" was published in the journal Advanced Materials, in collaboration with the group of Prof. George Malliaras in the Department of Bioelectronics, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines, Gardanne, France. Congratulations Jake!


• The paper "Removal of Residual Diiodooctane Improves Photostability of High-Performance Organic Solar Cell Polymers" was published in the journal Chemistry of Materials in collaboration with Bertrand Tremolet de Villars and other colleagues from NREL.

June 

• REU students Samantha Collin (Physics, Rollins College) and Robert Enright (Chemistry, Ripon College) have arrived for the summer. Welcome Sam and Robert!

– 2015 –

December

• The "ICAM Energy Transport Workshop Boulder 2015" was held at RASEI. Thanks to all the invited speakers and participants who contributed to a nice workshop, and bravely fought the winter storm to attend.

October 

• Jake's paper on "Optical Measurements Revealing Nonuniform Hole Mobility in Organic Electrochemical Transistors" was published in the journal Advanced Electronic Materials, in collaboration with the group of Prof. George Malliaras in the Department of Bioelectronics, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines, Gardanne, France. Congratulations Jake!


• Visiting student Philipp Köder has arrived from Erlangen, Germany (group of Prof. Christoph Brabec). He will be with us several months working on Perovskite devices in collaboration with NREL scientists Joe Berry, Joey Luther, and others. Welcome Philipp!

September 

• New members Benny Tai (Physics graduate student - spectroscopy of novel materials), Sean Dunfield (MSE graduate student - light management in nanostructured PV devices), and Soo Park (ECEE undergraduate student - charge transport characterization in PV) have all joined the group. Welcome!

August

• At SPIE Optics + Photonics 2015, Daniel gave a talk on "Singlet-Based Photon Upconversion in Multichromophore Organic Thin Films", and Jake gave an invited talk on "A Better Understanding of Organic Electrochemical Transistors for Biosensing Applications".


• Daniel, Alex, and Sean all gave talks at the Telluride Science Research Center workshop on Solar Solutions to Energy and Environmental Problems.

July

• Sean gave a talk on "In Defense of the Exciton: Pathways and Mechanisms to Higher Efficiencies in OPV" at the Telluride Science Research Center workshop on Multiscale Simulations of Organic Electronic Materials.

May

• Josh passed his Ph.D. Preliminary exam. Congratulations, Josh!
• The paper "Energy Pooling Upconversion in Organic Molecular Systems" was published in collaboration with the Lusk Group (Colorado School of Mines) and NREL colleagues in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A. The article was chosen as the cover articlefor the issue.

– 2014 –

October

• The paper "Neurons in Polymer: Hardware Neural Units Based on Polymer Memristive Devices and Polymer Transistors" was published in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.
• The paper "Holographic Spectral Beamsplitting for Increased Organic Photovoltaic Conversion Efficiency" was published in collaboration with the groups of Prof. Raymond Kostuk (U. Arizona) and Prof. Christine Luscombe (U. Washington) in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9184.

September

• The paper "High Open Circuit Voltage Organic Photovoltaics: Minimizing Energetic Loss with a High Band Gap Donor Polymer and a Small- Molecule Acceptor" was published in the Proceedings of the 40th IEEE Photovoltaics Specialist Conference (PVSC).
• The paper "Thermal Annealing Affects Vertical Morphology, Doping and Defect Density in BHJ OPV Devices" was published in the Proceedings of the 40th IEEE Photovoltaics Specialist Conference (PVSC).
• ECEE graduate student Joshua Brown from Louisiana Tech University joins the group. Welcome Joshua!

August

• The paper "Effect of Fractal Silver Electrodes on Charge Collection and Light Distribution in Semiconducting Organic Polymer Films" was published in collaboration with Prof. Frank Osterloh (UC Davis) and others in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.
• Sean and NREL colleagues Garry Rumbles, Jao van de Lagemaat, Nikos Kopidakis, and Dana Olson organized a workshop onExcitonic Photovoltaics (XPV) at the Telluride Science Research Center, August 12 - 15. The program can be found here: XPV 2014.

June

• Visiting scholar Santanu Pradhan has arrived from IIT Kharagpur, India. He is supported by the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) and will be working on fundamental studies of carrier dynamics in OPVs. Welcome Santanu!

May

• The paper "An Inverted, Organic WORM Device Based on PEDOT:PSS with Very Low Turn-on Voltage" was published in Organic Electronics.
• Postdoc David Ostrowski was awarded Best Postdoctoral Oral Contribution, Symposium FF: The Grand Challenges in Organic Electronics at the Spring MRS conference in San Francisco. His talk was on "Low Band Gap Small Molecule Acceptors for Organic Photovoltaics". Congratulations, Dave!
• Alex Dixon passed his Ph.D. Oral Proposal exam. Congratulations, Alex!