Date: May 1, 2017

Time: 4:00 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.

Location: Maeder Hall

Jean-Luc Bredas, regents’ professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, will speak on the topic of “Organic Electronics and Energy” as the Sigma-Aldrich Lecturer at Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.

ABSTRACT
The field of organic electronics, which emerged in the 1970s-1980s, has by now paved the way to a number of applications based on electrically and/or optically active organic materials. These applications, with many either energy-conserving or energy-producing, are projected to represent a market of up to $80 billion by 2020.

In this presentation, I will first discuss the basic aspects of organic electronics, with an emphasis on their relevance to the energy arena. I will then discuss some of our recent computational results, highlighting the progress made in our understanding of organic light-emitting diodes and solar cells.

BIO
Jean-Luc Bredas received his Ph.D. from the University of Namur, Belgium, in 1979. In 1988, he was appointed Professor at the University of Mons, Belgium, where he established the Laboratory for Chemistry of Novel Materials. While keeping an “Extraordinary Professorship” appointment in Mons, he joined the University of Arizona in 1999 before moving in 2003 to the Georgia Institute of Technology. In July 2014, he took a two and a half year leave of absence to King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) where he served as Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Director of the KAUST Solar and Photovoltaics Research and Engineering Center. At Georgia Tech, where he resumed his activities in January 2017, he is Regents’ Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and holds the Vasser-Woolley and Georgia Research Alliance Chair in Molecular Design. He is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar since 2005. His research interests focus on the computational characterization and design of novel organic materials for organic electronics and photonics.

This lecture is made possible by the generous support of Sigma-Aldrich, a leading life science and high technology company.