Using light and air to dope semiconductors

Doping semiconductors such as silicon with carefully chosen elements that modify their properties forms the basis of all electronics. Researchers have now used air and light to dope organic semiconductors ( Nature 2024, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07400-5 ). Their simple, room-temperature doping method is a step toward high-performance, low-cost organic electronics. Electronic devices based on organic semiconductors promise to be lightweight , flexible, and easy to make. The materials typically have low conductivity, though, so doping is critical for increasing performance. While silicon is doped with parts-per-million quantities of chemicals, organic materials require much larger fractions, making the doped organics "more like a composite," says Simone Fabiano , a chemist at Linköping University. And that composition comes with drawbacks. Unreacted dopants can merge to form nonconductive islands, worsening the material's electronic and structural properties. Fabiano and his colleagues thought of doping with a light-activated catalyst instead of chemical dopants. Photocatalysts are used