Andrew Holmes is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and obtained his PhD (F Sondheimer) at University College London in 1971. After a postdoctoral year with A Eschenmoser at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, he was appointed to a position in Cambridge where he remained for the next 32 years. He moved to Imperial College in October 2004 and was appointed an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow and inaugural Victorian Endowment for Science, Knowledge and Education Fellow at the Bio21 Institute at The University of Melbourne and at CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies at Clayton. His research interests span applications of synthesis to problems in materials science and biology. He is a co-founder of Cambridge Display Technology, a company exploiting light emitting polymers for displays. Andrew has received a number of Royal Society of Chemistry awards and the Descartes Prize of the European Union. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2000. He serves on various editorial boards and is an Associate Editor of the journal Organic Letters.

Seeing the light with polymers
by Professor Andrew Holmes

Most of us regard polymers (plastics) as being useful as a lightweight replacement for heavier structural materials such as steel and wood. They are traditionally used as insulators to prevent an electric shock from a live electrical conductor. The discovery that certain polymers could be made to conduct an electrical current as efficiently as metallic copper came as a surprise to many, and was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

This lecture is concerned with using polymers as semiconductors to emit light. It will show how a thin film of a fluorescent polymer can emit light when sandwiched between charged electrodes. It is now possible to make polymers that emit light over the range of the primary colours of the visible spectrum, and to apply this technology to flat panel display devices such as TVs and laptop computers. Progress in the field since the original discovery in 1989, and the effort needed to turn an academic discovery into a commercial reality, will be discussed.

Of relevance to the Symposium topic is the observation that it is possible to reverse the flow of light and to use related materials to absorb solar energy and generate electricity. The lecture will conclude with a discussion of the need to develop large area low cost solar cells to meet the world’s future energy demands.

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