Carl Pölking receives Otto Hahn Medal

For his outstanding dissertation "The (Non-) Local Density of States of Excellence in Organic Semiconductors", Dr. Carl Pölking receives the Otto Hahn Medal for the year 2016. The Max Planck Society (MPG) awards the prize to Pölking, who received his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P), for his theoretical studies on long-range electrostatic effects in organic semiconductors. The researcher, who has been working at the University of Cambridge since 2016, accepted the award on June 21 at the MPG's annual general meeting in Weimar.

In his doctoral thesis, Pölking deals with novel theoretical approaches to describe ions and excited electronic states in molecular solids more precisely. As a result, transfer processes of charges and excitons, spatially extended charge pairs, can be better understood in organic solar cells. The findings provide important indications for a better design of new materials used in solar cells. In addition, Pölking was able to explain and predict the continuous shift of electronic energy bands for mixtures of organic molecules. This effect has hitherto been known only in the case of inorganic semiconductors, so that its results are very important for the entire range of organic electronics. During his doctorate at the MPI-P, Pölking worked in the department "Theory of Polymers" led by Prof. Dr. Kurt Kremer.

About the Otto Hahn Medal

The prize is intended to motivate especially gifted junior scientists to pursue a future university or research career. Since 1978, more than 910 researchers have been awarded the Otto Hahn Medal that comes with a monetary sum of 7,500 euros. Nominations are made by the directors of the Max Planck Institutes, where the junior staff have researched during their doctorate.