Invited Speaker: Brian A. Collins, Assistant Professor of Physics
Brian Collins received his Ph.D. (2009) in Physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He then completed a postdoc at North Carolina State University after which he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the National Research Council to conduct research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He joined the Washington State University Department of Physics and Astronomy as an Assistant Professor in 2014.
Through his career, Dr. Collins has lead research in synchrotron X-ray techniques and applications, which resulted in 33 publications over an 11-year period (H-index=18; 8 publications > 200 citations). Dr. Collins has served on the User Executive Committee of the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which oversees the administration of the facility. In 2017 he received the US Department of Energy Early Career Award for his work in X-ray science.
Time： 10:00-12:00am，15th June , 2018
Location：Materials Strength Buliding Room 210 (材料学院强度楼210会议室）
Title: Quantifying structure-property relationships in organic devices via resonant soft X-ray techniques
Abstract:
Organic materials, composed of natural or synthetic carbon-based molecules, hold enormous potential to revolutionize the sectors of energy, electronics, and medicine. Through manipulation of both molecular structure and solid-state ordering, the optical, electronic, mechanical, and chemical properties can be optimized to a desired application and combined with other advantages such as flexibility, printability, and biocompatibility. While advances in chemical synthesis have enabled control of molecular structure, characterizing solid-state ordering continues to lag due to the light elements, poor contrast, and low crystallinity in most organic materials. I will outline our group’s efforts in developing novel X-ray techniques that use unique molecular resonances to reveal and quantify ordering occurring within molecular nanostructures and devices. I will highlight our recent work in pairing this novel probe of nanostructure with advanced characterization of charge generation dynamics occurring within organic solar cells. Such studies reveal critical structure-property relationships in organic devices toward their realization as a mature technology. As resonant X-ray probes are developed further, we continue to push deeper in our understanding on how ordering at the nanoscale can be used to control material properties and ultimately how new disruptive technologies could result from organic materials.
