The Organic Molecular Crystal Foundry

The organic molecular crystal foundry at NC State is a crystal growth facility whose purpose is to grow single crystal specimens for research projects in the Oragnic and Carbon Electronics Lab (ORaCEL). It is operated primarily by undergraduate students and is always open to new participants. We particularly seek out students with diverse reasons for interest in our materials growth operations that could include anything from hard science to aesthetically-motivated design or art ideas.

High quality organic single crystals are important specimens for discovering the performance limits of organic electronic devices [1]. Their good ordering has produced among the highest carrier mobilities in the materials class and it is easy to understand structure-property correlations.

Organic crystals are also beautiful! Have you ever enjoyed a gem hall at a museum or collected a brightly colored rock while hiking? We have the same feeling working with organic materials: these are often dye molecules with a vivid array of colors and form visually stunning crystals. This is another part of the mission of the Foundry. We want to bring the visual beauty of organic crystals to a broad public audience. This connects in an interesting way to the educational framework of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) which seeks to promote the artistic value of technical activities and to incoporate scientific approaches to artistic endeavors [2]. An example is the nice yellow-gold perylene crystals seen in Figure 1b below.

Figure 1. a) Main furnace used for Organic Molecular crystal foundry growth studies; Example Perylene crystals grown by founding undergraduate Johnathan Thomas; c) AFM image of the surface of anthracene crystal grown in the Organic Molecular Crystal Foundry.

Another example can be seen in a youtube video from Prof. Briseno's group here: Rubrene growth

References

[1] V. Podzorov, MRS Bulletin, 38, 15 (2013).

[2] http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/11/18/ctq-jolly-stem-vs-steam.html, 08/17/2017