Emma's Project Page

Who:  I was born and raised in Kaysville, Utah and came to the U because of the amazing opportunities to get involved in research, clubs, volunteering and of course, ACCESS! When I’m not studying, I love to ski, hike, run, and play with my cute dog.

My scientific/engineering interests:  I’ve always had a fascination about how the universe works, especially on a very small scale. I love math and physics because it gives us a way to quantify our world.

Academic goals:  I am a math and physics double major and am excited to continue working in my ACCESS lab. I hope to publish and attend conferences during my undergraduate degree. After I graduate, I would love to pursue a PhD in mathematics.

Career goals:  I would love to become a professor one day as I am not only passionate about research but fostering an education and love for learning in others. I am inspired by the many amazing people who have helped me in my journey thus far and hope to give back. I hope to have my own lab and work with some amazing students to discover new things.

We used organic thin-film layer based bipolar charge carrier injection devices, which are structurally very similar to organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), in order to study spin-dependent electronic charge carrier transitions in organic semiconductors. These studied devices consisted of glass substrates on which ~80 nm-thin Indium tin oxide (ITO) layers were deposited, before contact structures were made via photolithography. Using several spin-coating processing steps, active device layer stacks were then deposited by subsequent application of a ~50nm thin hole injection layer consisting of either a blend of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) and polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) or MoO3 as well as an ~50nm electron-hole recombination layer for which we used either the π-conjugated polymer poly[2-methoxy-5-(2-ethylhexyloxy)-1,4-phenylenevinylene] (MEH-PPV), or the co-polymer blend poly[{2,5-di(3′,7′-dimethyloctyloxy)-1,4-phenylene-vinylene}-co-{3-(4′- (3′′,7′′-dimethyloctyloxy) phenyl)-1,4-phenylenevinylene}-co-{3-(3′-(3′,7′- dimethyloctyloxy)phenyl)-1,4-phenylenevinylene}], also known as superyellow-PPV (SY-PPV). These polymer layers where then capped by application of thin (<5nm) electron injection layer for which we used Ca that was deposited in a metal evaporation process as well as an ~50nm thin Al back contact. The motivation of this work was to improve yield, lifetime, and reproducibility of our devices which have been low due to variations in the fabrication processes. We aimed to characterize all devices that result from the combination of the materials listed above and to find the optimal materials device structure as well as its optimal fabrication parameters. For each device, I-V characteristics, electroluminescence emission, as well as the electrically detected magnetic resonance (EDMR) spectroscopy was carried out. The results of this work revealed deposition parameter sets which produce devices with a higher quality, yield, and durability. Ultimately, this will allow for the study of spin dependent processes of charge-carriers in OLED devices with higher efficiently, i.e these studies will allow faster and more cost-efficient data collection.

Device Optimization & Characterization of Thin-Film Based OLEDs for Use in Electrically Detected Magnetic Resonance  Spectroscopy Download Device Optimization & Characterization of Thin-Film Based OLEDs for Use in Electrically Detected Magnetic Resonance  Spectroscopy