Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

High-performance printable hybrid light-emitting device architectures*Vision: The long-term goal of this Discovery Grant is to develop an internationally-recognized research program investigating the fundamental interrelations between the synthesis & processing, structural and physical properties of unique printable hybrid optoelectronic architectures and their potential use to produce high-performance low-cost light-emitting diodes.*Rationale: Exploring new manufacturing paradigms is essential for the Canadian economy, and printable optoelectronics is one of these rapidly-emerging sectors. In recent years, there was an extraordinary push to develop new and better low-cost and printable optoelectronic platforms for solar-energy harvesting, lighting & displays and sensing applications. Building on our research momentum from the last 5 years, we are proposing to exploit a unique electrospinning and co-jetting expertise we have developed for the aerospace industry to explore the fundamental structure-property interrelations in novel printable hybrid light-emitting device architectures. Indeed, our preliminary results show that well-controlled electrospinning (to produce nanofibers) and co-jetting (to produce microdroplets) are powerful low-cost deposition techniques, which are well-suited to produce unique film architectures using a wide range of solution-based materials. These deposition techniques are also ideal to combine seemingly incompatible materials, or to address solvent compatibility issues when producing hybrid thin-film heterostructures.*Meanwhile, exciting new printable material systems have also gained tremendous momentum in the last 5 years including new sol-gel precursors to produce high-quality nano-engineered metal-oxide materials, better quantum dots & quantum dot solids and methylammonium lead halide (or MALH) perovskites. As part of this program, we are proposing to take advantage of our extensive electrospinning/co-jetting capability combined with our established optoelectronic materials & device expertise to explore disruptive low-cost hybrid LED architectures. *Objectives: Building on promising results from the last 5 years, we wish to explore two (2) virtually unknown territories in the field of low-cost printable LEDs to achieve unparalleled control on the emission properties and reach unprecedented device performance in hybrid printable LEDs. In the next five-year, we will focus on exploring (1) combinatorial co-jetting of hybrid polymer microdroplets with and without quantum dots and (2) carbon nanotube & metal-oxide (e.g. TiO2) nanofiber networks embedded within a perovskite matrix to achieve the desired control and lead to significantly-improved devices that can potentially transform the field of printable LEDs and other low-cost devices for light-harvesting and sensing applications. *