A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), by a collaboration between Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Professor Juan de Pablo and UW-Madison chemistry Professor Mark Ediger, explains a method detailing the ability to order the molecules on organic glass by enabling their production so that the molecules that make up the glass are in an ideal position.
The isotropic quality of glass allows for its properties to be uniform in any and all directions, allowing for researchers to control the specific orientation of the molecules. This, in turn, leads to greater levels of efficiency and durability in the devices they are used, such as the electronic displays used in portable consumer electronics, organic light-emitting diodes (OLED), and photovoltaic devices.
Professor Juan de Pablo and Ivan Lyubimov of the University of Chicago’s Pritzker Molecular Engineering, working with researchers at UW-Wisconsin, explored the process for controlling molecular orientation during manufacture, known as physical vapor deposition, in which molecules are heated and evaporated in a vacuum chamber, which then condense into ultra-thin layers on a substrate that form a light-emitting display. This process can be exploited to easily make organic glasses whose molecules are better positioned, leading to enhanced properties of wide interest.
The study was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
Story courtesy of UW-Madison.