New Class of Materials for Organic Electronics

Joint Project Details Charge Transport in Polymeric Carbon Nitride for First Time. Polymeric carbon nitride is an organic material with interesting optoelectronic properties. As an inexpensive photocatalyst, it can be used to facilitate water splitting using sunlight. Joint research by Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, the University of Rostock, and Freie Universität Berlin as well as other partners has now investigated for the first time how light creates charge carriers in this class of materials and established details about charge mobility and lifetimes. They discovered surprising characteristics in their investigations that provide prospects for new applications, in conjunction with graphene for example. Polymeric carbon nitrides are organic compounds synthesized to form a yellow powder of a myriad of nanocrystals. The crystalline structure resembles that of graphite because the carbon nitride groups are chemically bound only in layers, while just weak Van der Waals forces provide cohesion between these layers.