Today, petrochemical compounds and rare metals such as platinum and iridium are used to produce semiconductors for optoelectronics, such as organic LEDs for super-thin TV and mobile phone screens. Physicists at Umeå University in collaboration with researchers in Denmark and China, have discovered a more sustainable alternative. By pressure-cooking birch leaves picked on the Umeå University campus, they have produced a nanosized carbon particle with desired optical properties.
“The essence of our research is to harness nearby renewable resources for producing organic semiconductor materials,” says Jia Wang, research fellow at the Department of Physics, Umeå University, and one of the authors of the study that has been published in Green Chemistry.
Organic semiconductors are important functional materials in optoelectronic applications. One application is organic light-emitting diodes, OLEDs, comprising ultra-thin and bright TV and mobile phone screens. Sharply increasing demand for this advanced technology is driving massive production of organic semiconductor materials.
Unfortunately, these semiconductors are currently produced mainly from petrochemical compounds and rare elements obtained through environmentally harmful mining. Moreover, these materials often contain so-called “critical raw materials” that are in short supply, such as platinum, indium and phosphorus.
From a sustainability point of view, it would be ideal if we can use biomass from plants, animals and waste to produce organic semiconductor materials. These starting materials are renewable and abundantly available. Research fellow Jia Wang and her colleagues at the Department of Physics, together with international partners, have succeeded in producing such a bio-based semiconductor material.
2023-11-28 19:41:02
Original from phys.org rnrn