PhD Studentship: High performance liquid crystals and liquid crystal polymers for organic electronics devices

Closing Date: 29 April 2024 at 23:59

Eligibility: UK Applicants only

Funding

EPSRC Doctoral Training Partnership Studentship offering the award of fees, together with a tax-free maintenance grant of £19,237 per year for 3.5 years. Training and support will also be provided.

Lead Supervisor’s full name and email address

Dr Mamatha Nagaraj – [email protected]

Co-supervisor name: To be confirmed

Project summary

Organic electronics offer numerous advantages and capabilities for the next generation of electronic devices. Devices integrated with organic electronic components span a wide range of fields including security gadgets, environmental health, biomedical research, information technology and so on. The successful use of organic materials as electrical conductors, in light emitting diodes, field effect transistors, photorefractive devices and photovoltaic cells require high performing organic semiconducting materials. This project focuses on using liquid crystals and liquid crystal polymers to address some of the challenges in material performance and device fabrication in organic electronic devices. It makes use of the ability of liquid crystals to spontaneously self-assemble into one and two dimensional nanostructures to optimise their performance. The project will be mainly experimental in nature and involves device fabrication, material optimisation and characterisation.

The project will take place in the Soft Matter Physics group in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds. Within the group, we have a variety of activities across soft matter. We work with world-leading chemists, engineers and theoreticians and our research is truly interdisciplinary. During the course of the PhD project a variety of experimental and device fabrication techniques will be employed offering an excellent practical training to the PhD student. Data analysis and computer modelling will be employed both to understand the systems and predict behaviour and performance. The student will obtain a thorough training in soft matter characterisation techniques, electronics, modelling of functional materials and devices. The research environment offers superb facilities, provides a high quality research training and delivers an exceptional student education.

Entry requirements

First or Upper Second Class UK Bachelor (Honours) degree or equivalent with background in soft matter physics, condensed matter physics, electronics, material physics or engineering, physical chemistry, or a closely related field.

Subject Area: Applied Physics, Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Science

Keywords

Functional Materials, Liquid Crystals, Organic Electronic, Polymers, Soft Matter Physics