Harnessing the Unconventional Properties of Organic Electronics for Advanced Devices: Toward Organic Neuromorphics

ABSTRACT: Organic electronic materials have multiple properties that contrast with those of conventional semiconductors: structural disorder that arises from complex molecular self-assembly forces and which hinders charge transport, low dielectric constant that does not shield Coulombic forces well, and mechanical softness that easily allows for the diffusion of external species. However, in the context of “what’s it good for?”, these and other inconvenient properties can be harnessed for devices that function beyond the scope of silicon. Here I will give a brief overview of my group’s activities in organic superconductivity and photonic upconversion that turn “bugs into features”. The main part of the talk will then focus on a rapidly emerging area: using new materials, devices, and system architectures for neuromorphic computing. I will describe earlier work in which we fabricated some of the first “polymeric neurons”, recent work on designing neuromorphic circuits from organic electrochemical transistors, and future goals in designing and building organic reservoir computing circuits.

BIO: Sean Shaheen is an Associate Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering and an Associate Professor by Courtesy of Physics. He obtained his BS de-gree in physics from Carnegie Mellon University in 1991 and his PhD in physics from the University of Arizona in 1999. He then went on to the University of Linz, Austria as a Lise-Meitner Postdoctoral Fellow from 1999 - 2001. Upon returning to the U.S. he joined the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) as a Scientist and then Senior Scientist from 2002