Photo credit: Vogler — File:Heeger, Alan J. (1936).jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY-SA 3.0
Alan J. Heeger
born 1936 · United States · 20th century
Nobel Chemistry 2000
American physicist-chemist at UC Santa Barbara who co-discovered conducting polymers and pioneered organic photovoltaics and plastic electronics.
Nobel Prize work
With Alan MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa, he discovered that polyacetylene can be doped to conduct electricity almost like a metal, and helped explain the mechanism through solitons in the conjugated chain. The discovery and development of conductive polymers created the field of plastic electronics, later used in OLEDs and flexible devices.
Fields
Related topics
OLEDs, solar cells
How organic electroluminescent diodes turn injected charge into light, and how photovoltaic devices turn absorbed photons into useful electrical work.
Conducting and photoactive polymers
Understand how conjugation, morphology and doping govern charge transport and optical response in conducting polymers, then connect these mechanisms to organic electronic devices and current research.