Richard H. Friend to receive 2015 Von Hippel Award for materials phenomena and device concepts
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Richard H. Friend to receive 2015 Von Hippel Award for materials phenomena and device concepts
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he 2015 Von Hippel Award, the Materials Research Society’s (MRS) highest honor, will be presented to Richard H. Friend, Optoelectronics Group, Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Friend is being recognized “for pioneering research on highly original materials phenomena and device concepts, enabled by polymeric semiconducting materials, and imprinting an indelible influence on contemporary materials science and the new field of plastic electronics.” Friend will present his award talk at the 2015 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston on December 2, at 6:30 p.m., in the Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton Boston Hotel. Friend’s research has had a major scientific and technological impact on important areas of contemporary materials science, with the centerpiece being his pioneering research on the materials physics of highly original device concepts based on polymeric semiconductors. His work has changed how materials scientists, chemists, physicists, and device engineers think about the properties and technology prospects of “plastic electronics.” In the mid-1980s, Friend initiated a research program in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge to investigate the electronic properties of so-called “conducting polymers.” Chemically doped π-conjugated polymers such as polyacetylene had been shown to behave as metallic conductors, and this work was later recognized by the Chemistry Nobel Prize awarded to Heeger, MacDiarmid, and Shirakawa in 2000. However, with remarkable insight, Friend realized that far more interesting and technologically useful science would lie in the use of such macromolecules as semiconductors, particularly in functioning diodes
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MRS BULLETIN
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VOLUME 40 • OCTOBER 2015
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and transistors. Thus, in 1988, Friend and his student Jeremy Burroughes showed for the first time that polyacetylene, prepared by a synthetic route developed by James Feast at the University of Durham, could demonstrate clean operation as a true fieldeffect transistor. In 1990, Friend and his group published a paper in Nature showing that other polymers, coming from a new collaboration with Andrew Holmes and his student Paul Burn in the Cambridge Chemistry Department, could function as light-emitting diodes. The paper proved to be seminal, attracting more than 8000 citations, and placing it in the top 20 most-cited papers in this journal. Friend, Burroughes, and Donal Bradley filed a patent ahead of the Nature letter, and this proved to be extremely valuable, leading to the founding of the successful nearby spin-off company, Cambridge Display Technology Ltd. Friend assembled and led a very talented Optoelectronics Group in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. Their goal was to explore and develop the many basic science challenges that can be accessed through polymer semiconductor devices. In an amazingly short period of time, they conceived, fabricated, and demonstrated a number of “firsts” including: 1995—
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