Symposium F.EL07—Coulomb Interactions in Functional Organic Materials and Devices—A Curse or a Blessing?
Electronic or excitonic transfer processes are the basic steps in the operation of any electronic or optoelectronic device. In organic molecular materials, they are associated to the strong Coulomb interaction, which is enhanced by the low dielectric constants and recent research is focusing on strong electrostatic effects in different contexts. Examples include their use as a design tool for band structure engineering, organic semiconductor doping or studies of excitonic properties in OLEDs. On the other hand, the Coulomb interaction determines the driving force for charge separation in excitonic solar cells and can affect energy storage in supercapacitors and is thus critical to the efficiency of such devices. All these functionalities are enabled by the underlying materials whose development strategies need to consider this interaction at a microscopic level.
This symposium aims at bringing together researchers from different communities that are concerned with strong electrostatic effects in organic molecular materials. This includes topics from doping organic semiconductors for electrical properties in films or at interfaces, optical properties and excitons for solar cells and photodetectors to materials development and materials modelling.