Fully Funded Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol Welsh-medium PhD Scholarship:Radical Organic Electronics: Organic Radical Devices with Polarised Doublet Emission

This scholarship is funded by the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol (50%) and Swansea University’s Chemistry Department (50%).

*As a condition of the Scholarship the doctoral dissertation is expected to be researched and written in Welsh.

Start date: October 2021

Subject areas: Chemistry, Radical Organic Electronics

Project Supervisors:

• Supervisor 1: Dr Emrys W. Evans (Royal Society University Research Fellow, Department of Chemistry, Swansea University; RED Group)
• Supervisor 2: Professor Paul Meredith (Sêr Cymru Research Chair, Department of Physics, Swansea University; Sêr SAM | Sustainable Advanced Materials)

In this project, the photo- and spin physics of polarised light emission in radical materials will be investigated for organic electronics. Unlike most organic materials which contain all-paired electronics, the radicals’ unpaired electron has a quantum mechanical property called spin which gives rise to magnetism and ‘doublet’ character. We have shown that their spin properties can be combined with strong luminescence to make highly efficient organic light-emitting diodes for converting electricity to light [1,2]: more efficient than non-radical counterparts that have been used to date. The student will explore novel functionality to advance the state of the art in organic optoelectronics.

[1] Ai, X, Evans, E. W., Dong, S., Gillett, A. J., Guo, H., Chen, Y., Hele, T. J. H., Friend, R. H., Li, F., Nature, 2018, 563, 536-540.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0695-9

[2] Abdurahman, A., Hele, T. J. H., Gu, Q., Zhang, J., Peng, Q., Zhang, M., Friend, R. H., Li, F., Evans, E. W. Nature Materials, 2020.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-020-0705-9

As a condition of the Scholarship the doctoral dissertation is expected to be researched and written in Welsh. The Scholarship holder will be expected to undertake some Welsh medium teaching within the Chemistry Department.

Eligibility

Candidates should hold a minimum of an upper second class (2:1) honours degree: Chemistry, Physics, Materials Science, Engineering or related subjects.