Rhodia de Gennes Prize awarded to Professor Sir Richard Friend
The first Rhodia de Gennes Prize was today awarded to Professor Sir Richard Friend, Cavendish Professor at the University of Cambridge "for his discoveries of charge injection into and electroluminescence from semiconducting polymers" at a ceremony in Paris, presented by the Minister of Science.
The work carried out by Sir Richard Friend, and submitted for this Prize, led the way to establishing the existence of semiconducting and luminescence effects in conjugated polymers. Not content with establishing the existence of these physical effects, Sir Richard Friend also made it his duty to develop concrete applications for these phenomena, up to and including production and marketing within product development structures that he himself had helped to create. This led to the development of organic and polymer systems that provide potential and realistic alternatives to the systems conventionally used in electronic applications based on liquid crystals, silicon or inorganic materials. It will be possible to use these systems as basic transistor components in electronic circuits, in light-emitting diodes for lighting and display purposes, and in photovoltaic applications for plastic solar panels.
Thanks to these conjugated polymers and their exceptional properties, Sir Richard Friend has become one of the pioneers in the current development of plastic electronics, for the creation of flexible electronic screens, which is a technology that has already been exploited in certain telephones and watches.