Biography
Henning Sirringhaus holds the Hitachi Professorship of Electron Device Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory and was awarded a Royal Society Research Professorship in 2020. He has an undergraduate and PhD degree in physics from ETH Zürich (CH). From 1995-1996 he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University (USA). He has been working in Cambridge on the charge transport physics of organic semiconductors and other functional materials since 1997. He is a co-founder of Plastic Logic/FlexEnable, a technology start-up company commercialising printed organic transistor technology.
Research
I am interested in scientific understanding of the charge and spin transport and photophysics of organic semiconductors, other carbon-based semiconductors as well as low-temperature processible hybrid organic-inorganic semiconductors. Organic semiconductors show a rich variety of transport phenomena which are not exhibited by conventional inorganic semiconductors such as silicon. Understanding of transport on the molecular scale requires sophisticated experimental techniques, and we have developed a broad range of electrical transport, optical spectroscopy, and scanning probe techniques to characterize these processes. We are also interested in applications of these materials in flexible electronics, spintronics as well as energy devices, in particular, thermoelectric waste heat conversion. The unique physics of molecular materials opens up new physical approaches for harvesting thermal energy and converting it into useful electricity.
Publications
‘Two-dimensional charge transport in self-organised, high-mobility conjugated polymers’. H. Sirringhaus, P.J. Brown, R.H. Friend, M.M. Nielsen, K. Bechgaard, B.M.W. Langeveld-Voss, A.J.H. Spiering, R.A.J. Janssen, E.W. Meijer, P. Herwig, D.M. de Leeuw. Nature, 401, 685 (1999).
‘General observation of n-type field-effect behaviour in organic semiconductors’. LL. Chua, J. Zaumseil, J.F. Chang, E. Ou, P. Ho, H. Sirringhaus, R.H. Friend. Nature, 434, 194 (2005).
‘Measurement of molecular motion in organic semiconductors by thermal diffuse electron scattering’ S. Eggeman, S. Illig, A. Troisi, H. Sirringhaus, P.A. Midgley, Nature Materials, 12, 1044 (2013).
‘Organic Field-Effect Transistors - The Path Beyond Amorphous Silicon’ (review article). H. Sirringhaus. Advanced Materials 26, 1319 (2014).
‘Approaching disorder-free transport in high-mobility conjugated polymers’ D. Venkateshvaran, M. Nikolka, A. Sadhanala, V. Lemaur, M. Zelazny, M. Kepa, M. Hurhangee, A.J. Kronemeijer, V. Pecunia, I. Nasrallah, I. Romanov, K. Broch,
I. McCulloch, D. Emin, Y. Olivier, J. Cornil, D. Beljonne, H. Sirringhaus, Nature 515 384 (2014).
‘2D coherent charge transport in highly ordered conducting polymers doped by solid state diffusion’, K. Kang, S. Watanabe, K. Broch, A. Sepe, A. Brown, I. Nasrallah, M. Nikolka, Z. Fei, M. Heeney, D. Matsumoto, K. Marumoto, H. Tanaka, S. Kuroda. and H. Sirringhaus, Nature Materials 15, 896 (2016).
‘High operational and environmental stability of high-mobility conjugated polymer field-effect transistors through the use of molecular additives’, M. Nikolka, I. Nasrallah, B. Rose, M.K. Ravva, K. Broch, A. Sadhanala, D. Harkin, J. Charmet, M. Hurhangee, A. Brown, S. Illig, P. Too, J. Jongman, I. McCulloch, J.-L. Bredas, H. Sirringhaus, Nature Materials 16, 356 (2017).
‘Polaron spin dynamics in high-mobility polymeric semiconductors’ S. Schott, U. Chopra, V. Lemaur, A. Melnyk, Y. Olivier, R. Di Pietro, I. Romanov, R.L. Carey, X. Jiao, C. Jellett, M. Little, A. Marks, C.R. McNeill, I. McCulloch, E.R. McNellis, D. Andrienko, D. Beljonne, J. Sinova and H. Sirringhaus, Nature Physics 15, 814 (2019).
‘Charge transport in high mobility conjugated polymers and molecular semiconductors’ S. Fratini, M. Nikolka, A. Salleo, G. Schweicher and H. Sirringhaus, Nature Materials 19, 491 (2020).
