Congratulations to Qiao He, Tian Du and Saurav Limbu, recognised for their outstanding scientifc achievements in the PECDT Thesis of the Year awards.

In 2019, the PECDT established an annual Thesis of the Year prize to recognise the outstanding scientific achievement of its students.

In 2020, Qiao He, Cohort 8, was given the award for his thesis on the synthesis and characterisation of new electron accepting materials for OPV applications.

Nominating him, Prof Martin Heeney, said has developed a range of interesting new acceptors, many of which involving complex multi-step synthesis. Qiao has performed preliminary device testing himself, and then worked with collaboratively  to further enhance understand the materials. This has resulted in five new material classes, grouped into new star shaped and calamitic acceptors. His work has resulted in five published first author publications to date, with three more manuscripts in progress. This is outstanding output for a predominantly synthesis based thesis. 

Chapter 2:

• (1) He, M. Shahid, J. Panidi, A. V. Marsh, W. Huang, M. Daboczi, J.-S. Kim, Z. Fei, T. D. Anthopoulos and M. Heeney, A versatile star-shaped organic semiconductor based on benzodithiophene and diketopyrrolopyrrole J. Mater. Chem. C, 2019, 7, 6622-6629.(cited 4 times)

Chapter 3:

• (2) He,^‡ F. D. Eisner,^‡ T. Hodsden, E. Rezasoltani, D. Lopez, Z. Fei, J. Nelson, and M. Heeney, Ring fusion in tetrathienylethene cored perylene diimide tetramers affords acceptors with strong and broad absorption in the near-UV to visible region J. Mater. Chem. C, 2020, accepted, in press DOI: 10.1039/D0TC04110F

Chapter 4:

• (3) He, M. Shahid, J. Wu, X. Jiao, F. D. Eisner, T. Hodsden, Z. Fei, T. D. Anthopoulos, C. R. McNeill, J. R. Durrant and M. Heeney, Fused Cyclopentadithienothiophene Acceptor Enables Ultrahigh Short?Circuit Current and High Efficiency> 11% in As?Cast Organic Solar Cells Adv. Funct. Mater., 2019, 29, 1904956. (cited 10 time)

Chapter 5:

• (4) He, M. Shahid, X. Jiao, E. Gann, F. D. Eisner, T. Wu, Z. Fei, T. D. Anthopoulos, C. R. McNeill and M. Heeney, Crucial Role of Fluorine in Fully Alkylated Ladder-Type Carbazole-Based Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 2020, 12, 9555-9562.; Cited 4 times

Chapter 6:

• (5) Firdaus,^‡ Q. He,^‡ Y. Lin, F. A. A. Nugroho, V. M. Le Corre, E. Yengel, A. H. Balawi, A. Seitkhan, F. Laquai, C. Langhammer, F. Liu, M. Heeney and T. D. Anthopoulos, Novel wide-bandgap non-fullerene acceptors for efficient tandem organic solar cells J. Mater. Chem. A, 2020, 8, 1164-1175. (equal first author; cited 9 times)

Prof Ji-Seon Kim presented the award at the PECDT Christmas party, where two other students were recognised for their outstanding research work taking runner up prizes:

Tian Du, Cohort 7, nominated by Prof Martyn McLachlan and Prof James Durrant.

Saurav Limbu, Cohort 7, nominated by Prof Ji-Seon Kim.