Printing and Polymers for Solar Cells

 

Mike Turner is Professor of Materials Chemistry and Director of the Organic Materials Innovation Centre at the University of Manchester. He obtained his first degree and a PhD from the University of Bristol, working with Professor Selby Knox on the synthesis of new organometallic complexes, before moving to the United States to work with Professor Harry Allcock investigating new routes to polyphosphazenes. He returned to the UK to work with Professor Peter Maitlis on the mechanism of the Fischer-Tropsch reaction and was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to investigate the synthesis of novel polymers in 1993. He joined the staff of the Department of Chemistry, University of Sheffield as a Reader in 2000 and in April 2004 moved to the University of Manchester to a Chair in Materials Chemistry and to be Director of OMIC. His main research interests are in the preparation of novel conjugated molecules plus developing an understanding of the structure/property relationships that govern the function of these materials in electronic and electrooptical devices. He is coordinator of the Organic Materials for Electronics Consortium, UK.

The Organic Materials Innovation Centre (OMIC) is a University Innovation Centre for the speciality organic materials and polymer industries based at the University of Manchester. The centre was established in 2004 with support from the UK Government. It is an independently managed partnership between industry and academia to help businesses to innovate and grow through collaborative R&D projects. OMIC has considerable expertise in the discovery, development and characterisation of new organic materials, for example conjugated oligomers, soluble oligoacenes, conjugated liquid crystals and semiconducting / conducting polymers. In addition OMIC has expertise in the processing, using ink-jet technology, of the novel semi-conducting and conducting polymers into a wide range of devices on a diverse range of substrates. Since 2009 OMIC has been a major partner in the Knowledge Centre for Materials Chemistry (KCMC).