The Optoelectronics Group forms part of the Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Physics, at the University of Cambridge. It brings together several research teams united by a shared interest in the fundamental materials and device physics of novel functional materials, principally organic semiconductors and hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites.
Such materials may be tuned through chemical design to give rise to distinctive physical phenomena, ranging from molecular quantum effects to strong coupling between electronic excitations and vibrational dynamics. The group studies these phenomena in depth, employing a broad range of experimental techniques supported by theoretical simulation, and seeks to exploit them for applications in solar energy, lighting, large-area and bioelectronics, and thermoelectrics.
The group’s origins lie in a discovery made at the Cavendish Laboratory in 1989, when researchers including Richard Friend observed efficient electroluminescence in a conjugated polymer. This finding was reported in 1990 in the journal Nature as the first demonstration of a polymer light-emitting diode, and is widely regarded as having founded the field of organic, or “plastic”, electronics.
The scientific and commercial significance of this discovery was substantial. In 1992, Cambridge Display Technology was founded to commercialise polymer light-emitting diode technology, becoming the first spin-out of the University of Cambridge to go public. A further spin-out, Plastic Logic, was founded in 2000 by Richard Friend and Henning Sirringhaus to develop flexible plastic electronics and printed transistor technology for applications such as electronic displays. Together, these ventures helped to establish Cambridge as an international centre for organic and printed electronics research.
In the decades since, the group has grown considerably and its scientific scope has broadened well beyond its origins in polymer light-emitting diodes. Building on its foundations in organic semiconductor physics, the group extended its work to encompass organic photovoltaics, printed and flexible transistors, and, more recently, inorganic nanocrystals, hybrid organic–inorganic perovskite semiconductors, which have emerged as a leading materials platform for next-generation solar cells and light-emitting devices. Alongside this, the group has developed considerable expertise in ultrafast optical spectroscopy and microscopy, thermoelectric physics, and the nanoscale mechanics of molecular materials.
Richard Friend served as Cavendish Professor of Physics from 1995 to 2020 and was knighted for services to physics in 2003; in 2010 he was a co-recipient of the Millennium Technology Prize for the development of plastic electronics. The group today is led by a number of principal investigators working across its constituent research themes, continuing a tradition of combining fundamental physical insight with an eye to real-world technological application.
The Optoelectronics Group is now based in the Ray Dolby Centre and the Maxwell building, part of the Cavendish Laboratory’s West Cambridge site. Its research today is directed towards one of the defining challenges of our age: the transformation of the world’s energy economy towards a sustainable, zero-carbon future, through the discovery and understanding of new functional materials for solar energy, lighting, and thermoelectric and bioelectronic devices.