Patrick Shively with Prof. Jie Shan

Investigation of Charge Transport in Organic Photoconductors

Understanding electronic charge transport in organic materials is of both fundamental and technological importance. Phthalocyanine (Pc) derivatives belonging to a family of discotic liquid crystals will be investigated as a model system.  These disk-like molecules can self-assemble into columns to create quasi-one-dimensional channels for efficient charge transport. The columns can also be aligned using an electric field creating an anisotropy of carrier mobility in the system.  Time-resolved spectroscopy will be used to examine the properties of photoexcited carriers in Pc including response to an external electric field, anisotropy, and coupling to vibrations of the molecules.