Derya Baran

Principal Investigator

Assistant Professor in Material Science and Engineering

Current

Research Interests

Professor Baran's research interests lie in the area of solution processable organic/hybrid soft materials for electronic devices. Such soft semiconductor materials possess a viable platform for printed, large area, stretchable and wearable electronics that can be used as solar cells, smart windows, OFETs, thermoelectrics, sensors and bio-electronics.

Professor Baran is particularly interested in interface engineering for organic/hybrid solar cells, transparent solar cells for building integrated photovoltaics and stability/degradation studies for long lifetime organic solar cells. She has led projects on i) conjugated polymers for electrochromic devices; ii) non-fullerene acceptors for organic solar cells; iii) multi-component and multi-layered solar cell devices; and iv) understanding the correlation between recombination and nano-morphology in solution processed solar cells.

​​Professor Baran aims to expand the applications of solution processable organic/hybrid semiconductors and to explore their limits in organic/hybrid thermoelectric devices and bio-electronics in the future.

Selected Publications

  • Reducing the efficiency–stability–cost gap of organic photovoltaics with highly efficient and stable small molecule... 
    Baran, D.; Ashraf, S. R.; Hanifi, A. David; Abdelsamie, M.; Gasparini, N.; Rohr, J.; Holli...
    Nat. Mater. DOI: 10.1038/NMAT4797, (2016)
  • Reduced voltage losses yield 10% and >1V fullerene free organic solar cells 
    Baran, D.; Kirhcartz, T.; Wheeler, S.; Dimitrov, S.; Abdelsamie, M.; Gorman, J.; Ashraf, S...
    Energ. Environ. Sci., DOI: 10.1039/C6EE02598F, (2016)
  • Designing ternary blend bulk heterojunction solar cells with reduced carrier recombination and a fill factor of 77% 
    Gasparini, N.; Jiao, Xuechen, Heumueller, T.; Baran, D.; Matt, G. M.; Fladischer, S.; Spie...
    Nat. Energ. 1, 16118, (2016)
  • High-efficiency and air-stable P3HT-based polymer solar cells with a new non-fullerene acceptor 
    Holliday, S.; Ashraf, S. R.; Wadsworth, A.; Baran, D.; Nielsen, C. B.; Tan, C. H.; Dimitro...
    Nat. Commun., 7,11585, (2016)
  • Overcoming the Interface Losses in Planar Heterojunction Perovskite‐Based Solar Cells 
    Hou Y.; Chen W.; Baran D.; Stubhan T.; Luechinger N. A.; Hartmeier B.; Richter M.; Min J.;...
    Adv. Mater., 28, 51125120, (2016)

Education

  • Ph.D., Material Science and Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany, 2014
  • M.Sc., Chemistry, Middle East Technical University, Turkey, 2010
  • B.Sc., Chemistry, Middle East Technical University, Turkey, 2008

Professional Profile

  • Research Associate, Jülich Forschungszentrum, Germany, 2016
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Plastic Electronics, Imperial College London, UK, 2015​​

KAUST Affiliations

  • Research Associate, Jülich Forschungszentrum, Germany, 2016
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Plastic Electronics, Imperial College London, UK, 2015​​​

Research Interests Keywords

solution-processable organic/hybrid soft materials for electronic devices printed organic/hybrid electronics smart materials