'Organic' computers come closer to reality

What if your computer was organic too? A team of researchers has come one step closer to making nature meet science.

The Lomonosov MSU researchers in collaboration with their German colleagues from the Institute of Polymer Research in Dresden (Leibniz Institute) managed to find a molecule that, to their opinion, could give the impetus to the development of organic electronics.

Scientists found that a derivative of [3]-radialene, a molecule known to the science for nearly 30 years, can be used to create organic semiconductors.

Co-author Dmitry Ivanov believes that the achievement will greatly contribute to the development of organic electronics and, in particular, to fabrication of organic light emitting diodes and new classes of organic solar cells.

"We decided to design a completely new type of low molecular weight dopant for the organic semiconductor," said Ivanov, adding "And here it was important to choose a molecule that it was not only suitable in its energy levels, but, importantly, the dopant must be well mixed with the polymer, so that in contact with the polymer it does not segregate in a separate phase, eventually crystallizing and, in fact, losing contact with the polymer."

The experiments with the [3]-radialene, also confirmed by the results of quantum-chemical calculations, show that the substance is well mixed with a semiconducting polymer and allows to increase the electrical conductivity of the polymer by several tens and even hundreds of times. It has been found that up to 50 percent of the dopant's content in the polymer the phase separation does not occur, but the crystalline structure of the polymer is gradually changed. This meant that the dopant molecules are included in the polymer crystalline lattice and form the so-called co-crystal. And the formation of co-crystals, according to Ivanov, is precisely one of the main reasons for the high efficiency of the new compound.

The results are published in Advanced Materials.