A multidisciplinary team from Imperial College London, Molecular Vision Ltd and Imperial Innovations has won a prize of £250,000 from the Royal Society to develop two innovative nanotech concepts through to commercial exploitation.
The winning technology targets step changes in the speed and economics of manufacturing organic semiconductor devices, and has the potential to yield major breakthroughs for climate change and carbon control.
The funding will help the team commercialise two fabrication processes in the intellectual property pipeline of Imperial Innovations: an interlayer lithography technique and a solid-phase transfer lithography technique. Such techniques are expected to help realise the full potential of plastic electronics by enabling low-cost high-throughput reel-to-reel manufacturing for a variety of applications.
The team is focusing on organic photovoltaics and solid-state lighting applications for which multiple benefits could result, including commercial breakthroughs in multi-billion pound markets.
The applications could strengthen the plastic electronics manufacturing industry in the UK, and make a huge impact on carbon control and efforts to arrest negative trends in climate change – both in terms of energy production (organic solar cells) and consumption (organic solid-state lighting).
A hundred megatonnes of carbon-equivalent emissions could be saved each year by implementing more energy-efficient solid-state lighting technologies worldwide in the next two decades.
The team plans to work with industry partners and public-sector organisations committed to tackling climate change issues and advancing the technology innovation base of the UK.
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