The following was taken from my Facebook blog.
Midnight, Tuesday, 10th October, 2006
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It pisses me off that there is this professional institute course at MIT in which the students fabricate an OLED in just one afternoon! I mean, we are planning to take a whole year for a fabrication project! Of course, unlike us, they are just going to use an existing technology, the apparatus and procedures for which have already been setup, while we will be researching to see what is out there, what devices would be worth building for our project (though we have our sights set on general lighting, as our targeted area), we will try to optimize our device parameters through solving design problems (which is what engineers do), and ten we will design a process to fabricate the design that we devised. Pretty much, we'll be foraging and cooking, while the MIT students in that particular course will be the short order cooks (I think that is the term) who just have everything prepared beforehand, by someone else. The course can be found here: http://web.mit.edu/mitpep/pi/courses/org... Anyway, so much for my rant. And now that I have cooled off, I can get back to work!
22:47, Monday, 9th October, 2006
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Besides the simple molecules and polymer OLEDs that I've encountered, I have come across something called dendrimers, and apparently (according to an OLED fabrication workshop held in Korea, in 2005, by Interchange) dendrimers are extremely important, in terms of materials used for OLED fabrication.
15:30, 8th October, 2006
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Other companies that I encountered:
Siemens
Dow-Corning
Vitex Systems
Philips (saw one device with the Philips logo)
4 in the morning, Saturday, 7th October, 2006
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Companies I've encountered, that deal with OLEDs:
DuPont
OSRAM
Eastman Kodak
IBM
OIDA
Advanced Energy --CitiGroup
There are others, but many that I only just got the name of.
Almost midnight, Thursday, 5th October, 2006
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Today was a Dorsinville Day. I discussed my findings (only 3 papers in my personal collection of nearly 2 years of Journal of Electronic Materials, and nearly 1 year's worth of Electrochemical and Solid State Letters) on OLEDs with Professor Dorsinville. Although the number of papers was very small, since I had the papers on me we were able to talk more about the content of the papers, than we would have, otherwise. More importantly, the professor was able to point out that I should focus my search (while still aiming to get a broad overview of the field) by checking if the materials that I find are:
1) polymeric or single molecules
2) luminescent, or phosphorescent
3) what the turn on voltage is
4) what the threshold voltage is (also that we are interested in materials)
5) lifetime
6) structure (layers, crystalline/non-crystalline, I guess)
7) cd/V
--> we want, for general lighting applications, a brightness of 100 cd at 3-4V.
At night, after the Zahran exam (yes, today was a Zahran Day, too) I trawled the net again, looking for papers with pertinent info (just skimming over the surface), and for a while I got interested in implementing a semiconductor laser, or an organic quantum dot, or better yet, an organic materials based photonic circuit, consisting of, perhaps, optical waveguides, or an optical bistable switch. I entertained the idea for perhaps more than an hour (if you go by Robert Collwell, author of The Pentium Chronicles, this is the stage when I am supposed to be juggling multiple castles in the air), and then I realized something: I still needed the OLED to use with such a circuit. Oh well, it was a nice little romantic idea, anyway, and one that will perhaps get more than a few guilty visits from me, as time goes by.
While my mentor in this project might be taken a bit aback at the idea of a photonic circuit, he might not be extremely unhappy about an organic semiconductor laser (he is planning to teach a graduate laser course, this Spring, which I am hoping to take). On the other hand, however, a laser will add a level of complexity and challenge that may well be beyond the reach of four undergraduates within the course of one year. Of course, we could all stay on, for that, but:
1) we all want to graduate: we want to get paid to study (as graduate students), not have to pay to study
2) our mentor might be getting a grant for OLEDs for general lighting applications, but he didn't mention funding for an organic laser anytime soon, or an organic photonic circuit.
So, jumping back down to the next highest excited state (I lost track of which excited state I've been in, so long ago, I thought I was in my ground state), while still trying to juggle castles in the air, I am now trying to set foundations for my castles (or, at least one) on the ground: I have searched the net (Google Scholar, actually) for papers on the device physics of OLEDs, and I actually found one that I can relate to, directly, for its reminiscence of texts on semiconductor device physics.
Now, the only other techy/sexy, but seemingly unrelated task I see for myself is a review of electromagnetics: the study of fields inside materials and devices actually brings to life the boring aluminum pipes I've called waveguides.After thought: The only problem that I have, right now, is that I am dealing with organic materials, and thelast time I touched orgo, I was in high school (GCSE A Level), and I see that I am looking at materials solely for what result they produce, without trying to use an understanding of how the materials work, in choosing the materials to use. I suppose I should learn to get used to that; being trained as an electrical engineer, I should be able to black box things. But, of course, to do a better job I think I'll need some understanding, and I am hoping that a little bit of orientation will help. I'm working on it.
Sundown, Saturday, 30th September, 2006
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Although yesterday, and today, were mostly a waste of time, I feel I have got a few things into perspective. As I cool off, after some hours at a study table, let me go through what I have gathered on the answer to Professor Kowach's most bothersome question: "Why do you like research?"
I guess my answer to that, right now, is "I like to do stuff; I like to build on what has been done, and to take that further." I realized this much when thinking over how I have been feeling about my senior design project, what I have been doing for it, and what has been exciting for me, this far. I've noticed that while Professor Dorsinville (my capstone mentor) had only told us to read up on two chapters on OLEDs, from his former PhD student's thesis (and some papers on the matter, if we were interested) I went along and found a number of papers on what materials were now being used for the latest OLED devices, some research papers on the latest developments, and a bunch of companies that deal with OLEDs, both, for research, and for commercial purposes; a task for which I had burned many nights of midnight oil; and, of course, I thoroughly enjoyed the process, eventhough the sheer tiredness it all left me in caused my voice to sound like the croaking of a frog! Of course, having started on this part of the work more than paid off for my falling asleep during the professor's orientational presentation (yes, I was that tired). Now, at least, I am sure that I do have a drive that may take me further in research (this was one boost that I definitely needed, after not being able to schedule suitable timing with the grad students, to use the equipment in Prof. Crouse' lab); also, I am assured my credibility for my being nominated in "Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges;" (this was an assurance that Ineeded for myself). Anyway, getting back to OLEDs, and research, I now realize, from my spending ample amounts of time gathering research papers (both, online, using mine, my school's, and the public library's electronic subscriptions, and offline, in my own collection of subscription materials), and my interest in getting my paws on the vapor deposition chamber in Prof. Dorsinville's lab, that I like to find out effects, and to use them in making devices. I hope that provides at least part of the answer to Prof. Kowach's question, eventhough I am quite sure that he'll come up with something to throw me off-balance, again!
P.S. O, before I forget, I must remember to investigate a new transparent electrode that replaces ITO, as the substrate. I think I saw it in IEEE's Spectrum.
Morning, Wednesday, 28th September, 2006
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Most of the 27th has been spent on sleep. It's funny why I don't see streams of electrons, and bridges of conducting structures in my sleep, anymore; that was just so common at this time, last semester. I think I've got a slightly better understanding of organic semiconductor, but I am still a little shaky when it comes to the physics of the pn junction. Let's hope I can get that down before I go for suhur.
Tuesday, 26th, September, 2006
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It seems a long time since I chose to be make an exotic kind of device that can be used for display, as well as lighting, for my Senior Design Project (CAPSTONE). The project is going to make an organic light emitting diode. I have been pondering the device's functions, looking up ways to make it, and trying to understand how it would actually work. Lately I had been thinking so much about it, and loosing sleep over it, to the point that my mother asked, "Is it Capstone, or is it a (girl)?" Well, sometimes I wish it was the latter. Anyway, I think I'm going to go to bed, now: a first, after a long series of staying up past 4 in the morning. Let's hope I can wake up in time for suhur. After that I have to read up on the band diagrams for these devices. I'll add more to this note, later.
My Capstone (Senior Design) partners are:
Hassan
Diba
Pierre
My project mentor is Professor Dorsinville.