Prof Sirringhaus worked on polymer field-effect transistors (FETs) in the late 1990s when they had poor mobilities; 10,000 times lower than thin film silicon. In 1999, using solution self-organisation mechanisms, he pioneered improvements in the mobility to values comparable with silicon. By 2000 he developed an inkjet printing process for polymer FETs which allowed fabricating well-defined multilayer structures by solution-deposition and achieving high printing resolution through surface energy patterning.
In 2013 his group observed the inverse spin-Hall effect in a conjugated polymer and pure spin-current transmission through organic semiconductors, opening opportunities for spin-based information processing in organic materials. They recently reported high-mobility conjugated polymers where transport approaches disorder-free limits.
"I'm very pleased that Henning's work has been recognised in this way," said Indro Mukerjee, chairman of FlexEnable, where Prof Sirringhaus is also chief scientist and board member. "This award confirms the value of the technology leadership which Henning has created, and the exciting future for powerful, organic-based flexible electronics that FlexEnable has developed."
