David Savastano, Editor10.13.10
Universities have been playing a major role in research and development of printed electronics (PE). With an eye toward the emerging markets for PE as well as opportunities for other branches of electronics, including organic photonics, the Georgia Institute of Technology formed the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics, or COPE, in 2003, bringing in leading experts in the field to its faculty.
According to Jason Martin, COPE’s director of marketing and communications, COPE is focused on the development of new organic-based materials and devices that will advance the information technology, energy and defense sectors, and is moving forward with its research efforts in conjunction with a powerful array of partners.
“COPE was launched in 2003 by four prominent Georgia Tech professors recruited from the University of Arizona: Seth Marder, Bernard Kippelen, Jean-Luc Bredas and Joseph Perry,” said Martin. “The broad vision of the center is to become a leading resource of research, education and innovation in the field of organic photonics and electronics. COPE is now the largest center of its kind, with more than $40 million in total research funding.”
Marder, from the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has served as Director from the center’s inception through 2009, and currently serves as co-Director with Kippelen, from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Kippelen will assume the role of Director at the beginning of 2011.
COPE’s partners run the gamut between leaders in industry, government and academia. Among them are Solvay, SA; Imperial College of London; Princeton University; Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Arizona; the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL); the University of Washington; Department of Defense; National Science Foundation; and the Department of Energy.
COPE has expertise in theory, synthesis, material science and characterization, device physics and in electrical and materials engineering. COPE has also access to state-of-the-art infrastructure on the campus of Georgia Tech through the Nanotechnology Research Center, the southeast U.S. node in the NSF-supported National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network.
It is a team approach that allows COPE to successfully focus on projects and come up with innovative approaches.
“COPE brings together multiple expert perspectives from across the Georgia Tech campus – six Georgia Tech schools and 26 faculty members – and also partners with an international network of leading universities and corporations that are doing research in the field,” said Martin. “This combination of internal depth of expertise across multiple disciplines and access to a large network of partners allows COPE to take on the most challenging of research and development projects and produce state-of-the-art results.”
As a result, COPE has developed new technologies in fields as diverse as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), organic photovoltaics (OPVs) and power, among others.
“COPE has made significant advances in numerous areas that are relevant for PE, including in OLEDs for solid-state lighting and display technologies, organic and hybrid photovoltaic technologies for portable power, nanocomposites for energy storage, novel nanolithography techniques to pattern graphene, carbon nanotube electrodes for energy harvesting technologies, printable organic and hybrid thin-film transistors for flexible electronics, organic materials for all-optical switching and computing, barrier coatings for the encapsulation of organic electronics, and biologically-enabled materials processing, to name just a few,” Kippelen said.
Outside of research, COPE is promoting growth in PE through a variety of approaches, from scholarships and open houses to bringing in expert lecturers. For example, the COPE Fellowship Program provides promising graduate students conducting research in the field with a $5,000 annual stipend to promote research in the field. The Industrial Affiliates Program launched in 2010 encourages corporate innovation and new organic approaches to products by giving them access to the resources and knowledge at COPE.
COPE co-hosts an annual Solvay–COPE Symposium on Organic Electronics that brings together key players in PE research from universities and major corporations that are commercializing products.
“This forum allows researchers and corporations to communicate the critical research, development and market needs that each are currently facing,” Martin noted. “This dialogue helps productively speed the process of getting products out of the lab and into the marketplace.”
COPE’s Distinguished Lecture Series provides attendees with the opportunity to hear from industry pioneers. The first of these lectures will be held Oct. 29, with Michael Graetzel, inventor of the dye-sensitized solar cell, on hand to discuss his ground-breaking research. An audio/video recording will be made available via the COPE website following the event.
“In the past, COPE has organized a seminar series that invites faculty from other universities and representatives from companies to share their research efforts with the Georgia Tech campus community,” Martin said. “This has recently been updated to a Distinguished Lecture Series where invited lecturers, chosen for their seminal contributions to research in organic photonics and electronics, share their insights and expertise with the public.”
On Nov. 4, COPE will hold its annual Open House to provide an opportunity for students, faculty, researchers, and companies in related disciplines to learn about the research being conducted at the center. This forum emphasizes cross-disciplinary interactions and allows those outside the field to gain a more intimate knowledge of the technological possibilities.
Ultimately, COPE’s leadership team sees great opportunities for merging printing and electronics.
“Investments made into the development of new PE materials and equipment over the last decade have made PE products increasingly competitive with traditional thin-film electronics, both economically and with respect to device performance,” Kippelen concluded. “The printable and versatile nature of PE has allowed costs to be continually driven down while the functionality of devices has improved. COPE expects the future of the PE market to reflect this over-arching trend with an increased uptake of products in existing application areas, and an overall increase in the breadth of applications where PE products are a viable choice. COPE’s leaders envision that carbon photonics and electronics will be one of the key technological innovations of the 21st century.”
Photograph of hybrid organic-based thin film transistors and complementary inverters on flexible plastic substrates developed at COPE. (Photo courtesy of C. Fuentes-Hernandez, Georgia Tech) |
“COPE was launched in 2003 by four prominent Georgia Tech professors recruited from the University of Arizona: Seth Marder, Bernard Kippelen, Jean-Luc Bredas and Joseph Perry,” said Martin. “The broad vision of the center is to become a leading resource of research, education and innovation in the field of organic photonics and electronics. COPE is now the largest center of its kind, with more than $40 million in total research funding.”
Marder, from the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has served as Director from the center’s inception through 2009, and currently serves as co-Director with Kippelen, from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Kippelen will assume the role of Director at the beginning of 2011.
COPE’s partners run the gamut between leaders in industry, government and academia. Among them are Solvay, SA; Imperial College of London; Princeton University; Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Arizona; the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL); the University of Washington; Department of Defense; National Science Foundation; and the Department of Energy.
COPE has expertise in theory, synthesis, material science and characterization, device physics and in electrical and materials engineering. COPE has also access to state-of-the-art infrastructure on the campus of Georgia Tech through the Nanotechnology Research Center, the southeast U.S. node in the NSF-supported National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network.
It is a team approach that allows COPE to successfully focus on projects and come up with innovative approaches.
“COPE brings together multiple expert perspectives from across the Georgia Tech campus – six Georgia Tech schools and 26 faculty members – and also partners with an international network of leading universities and corporations that are doing research in the field,” said Martin. “This combination of internal depth of expertise across multiple disciplines and access to a large network of partners allows COPE to take on the most challenging of research and development projects and produce state-of-the-art results.”
As a result, COPE has developed new technologies in fields as diverse as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), organic photovoltaics (OPVs) and power, among others.
“COPE has made significant advances in numerous areas that are relevant for PE, including in OLEDs for solid-state lighting and display technologies, organic and hybrid photovoltaic technologies for portable power, nanocomposites for energy storage, novel nanolithography techniques to pattern graphene, carbon nanotube electrodes for energy harvesting technologies, printable organic and hybrid thin-film transistors for flexible electronics, organic materials for all-optical switching and computing, barrier coatings for the encapsulation of organic electronics, and biologically-enabled materials processing, to name just a few,” Kippelen said.
Outside of research, COPE is promoting growth in PE through a variety of approaches, from scholarships and open houses to bringing in expert lecturers. For example, the COPE Fellowship Program provides promising graduate students conducting research in the field with a $5,000 annual stipend to promote research in the field. The Industrial Affiliates Program launched in 2010 encourages corporate innovation and new organic approaches to products by giving them access to the resources and knowledge at COPE.
COPE co-hosts an annual Solvay–COPE Symposium on Organic Electronics that brings together key players in PE research from universities and major corporations that are commercializing products.
“This forum allows researchers and corporations to communicate the critical research, development and market needs that each are currently facing,” Martin noted. “This dialogue helps productively speed the process of getting products out of the lab and into the marketplace.”
COPE’s Distinguished Lecture Series provides attendees with the opportunity to hear from industry pioneers. The first of these lectures will be held Oct. 29, with Michael Graetzel, inventor of the dye-sensitized solar cell, on hand to discuss his ground-breaking research. An audio/video recording will be made available via the COPE website following the event.
“In the past, COPE has organized a seminar series that invites faculty from other universities and representatives from companies to share their research efforts with the Georgia Tech campus community,” Martin said. “This has recently been updated to a Distinguished Lecture Series where invited lecturers, chosen for their seminal contributions to research in organic photonics and electronics, share their insights and expertise with the public.”
On Nov. 4, COPE will hold its annual Open House to provide an opportunity for students, faculty, researchers, and companies in related disciplines to learn about the research being conducted at the center. This forum emphasizes cross-disciplinary interactions and allows those outside the field to gain a more intimate knowledge of the technological possibilities.
Ultimately, COPE’s leadership team sees great opportunities for merging printing and electronics.
“Investments made into the development of new PE materials and equipment over the last decade have made PE products increasingly competitive with traditional thin-film electronics, both economically and with respect to device performance,” Kippelen concluded. “The printable and versatile nature of PE has allowed costs to be continually driven down while the functionality of devices has improved. COPE expects the future of the PE market to reflect this over-arching trend with an increased uptake of products in existing application areas, and an overall increase in the breadth of applications where PE products are a viable choice. COPE’s leaders envision that carbon photonics and electronics will be one of the key technological innovations of the 21st century.”