Originally I had a really long paragraph here describing organic electronics, conducting polymers, and scanning tunneling microscopy. Then I realized people like brevity.

I use an instrument known as the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to analyze a branch of materials known as "conducting polymers." Chock full of electron-flowing goodness, such polymers can be used in a number of different applications. Right now, organic light-emitting diodes are hitting the marketplace in all sorts of devices. The next potential market might be in organic photovoltaics. In other words, organic solar cells.

The STM allows us to probe some of the interesting physics and surface chemistry of such materials. For example, how do the molecules behave on different surfaces? How is charge distributed within a single polymer layer? What is the dominant charge mechanism in heterojunctions? I first investigated a simple polymer known as "polydiacetylene" for my MS work. I still flirt with it somewhat for a few different experiments (including a few I really want to try), but I have since transitioned to working with thin layers of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and P3HT-C60 heterojunctions. The latter is useful not only for organic photovoltaics but also as a cool system to probe nanoscale transport properties of P3HT.

UPDATE! Here is a picture that doesn't show a whole lot but looks kind of hip.

This is a somewhat false-color image of two things. The top image is two rows of ordered 10,12-pentacosadiynoic acid molecules. The 2 highest points along the center of each row are triple-bonded carbon atoms. I told my brother (my computer scientist brother) that and he asked if "Triple Bond" was the stuff for athlete's foot. These triple-bonded carbons can combine to form long polymers, as shown in the second image. These polymers are polydiacetylene nanowires. Cool, huh? If nothing else, the top image reminds me of clowns. Oh, I got a funny story about these unfunny clowns that came to my class in third grade....but I'm out of time. Tune in next time I update, assuming globabl warming hasn't killed us all by then!