Molecular semiconductors are one of the building blocks of organic electronics, the effort to develop new devices based on organic compounds for a number of applications including flexible devices and displays, biological sensors, bioelectronics devices and photovoltaic devices. Up to now, the process of materials development has been based on a tedious sequence of trial and error. The primary goal of this project has been the development of a rapid method to perform virtual screening of molecular semiconductors that possess high charge mobility. This has been achieved and reported over a series of peer reviewed publications. The mobility of 40,000 semiconductors with known crystal structure was evaluated demonstrating the efficacy and robustness of the methodology on very large sample. The main advantage of this approach is that it gives access to results for materials that are synthetically accessible and allows the derivation of novel structure-property relations.
The second goal of this proposal has been to identify potential exploitation routes from the innovations from several hypotheses formulated initially. After discussion with potential private sector partners two of such routes have been identified. One route is the commercialization of the software to compute the charge mobility in partnership with a software company. A second route is the development of a broader database to cater to all companies interested in organic electronics beyond the originally intended area of molecular field effect transistors.
The main economic benefit of this innovation is the acceleration of innovation on organic electronics, a large ecosystem of start-ups, corporations and public research institutes which has received substantial public and private investment over the past 20 years in Europe.
