Rhodia de Gennes Prize awarded to Professor Sir Richard Friend

More details

In 1988 Friend and Burroughes established that conjugated polymers exhibit clean semiconducting characteristics and showed that control of carrier concentration is possible in a field-effect transistor configuration through external gating. Two years later Friend, Bradley, and Burroughes at Cambridge, and independently Heeger et al. at UCSB, observed for the first time electroluminescence in light-emitting diodes based on conjugated polymers. The fundamental discoveries started what isknown as the field of semiconducting polymer electronics.

Friend built up an internationally leading research group at Cambridge. Key achievements have included demonstration of efficient photovoltaic diodes based on polymer blends (1995), optically-pumped lasing in conjugated polymers (1996), high-mobility polymer field-effect transistors based on selforganising polymers (1999), realisation of all-polymer photonic devices (1999), directly-printed polymer transistor circuits (2000), and the realisation of efficient electron transport at organic semiconductor – dielectric interfaces (2004).

Over the last twenty years semiconducting polymer materials have found their way from the academic research lab into the industrial world. The market for organic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) displays was $ 475 million in 2006 and is growing steadily. Much of this market is presently served by small molecule organic semiconductors, but conjugated polymer based devices are expected to rise in importance as display sizes increase.Friend played an important role in the commercialization of polymersemiconductors. 

In 1992 Friend, Burroughes, and Bradley, together with Holmes founded Cambridge Display Technology on the basis of fundamental patents protecting polymer LED technology. The company led the industrialization, and widespread adoption of polymer LED technology. The company was acquired by Sumitomo Chemicals in 2007. 

In 2000, Friend and Sirringhaus founded Plastic Logic to commercialize polymer transistor technology. The company is presently building a manufacturing plant in Dresden, Germany, to launch the first polymer transistor based flexible display product onto the market. 

In 2007 Friend, Greenham, and Sirringhaus announced the formation of a third spin-off company to commercialise polymer solar cell technology, as a joint initiative between the University of Cambridge and the Technology Partnership (TTP) with funding from the Carbon Trust.