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School of Physical and Chemical Sciences

Dr Theo Kreouzis

Theo

Senior Lecturer in Physics

Email: t.kreouzis@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: 020 7882 3432
Room Number: G.O. Jones Building, Room 115

Profile

I am an experimental Condensed Matter Physicist by training and by trade; over the years I have worked on fundamental charge transport measurements as well as semiconductor devices on the following topics:

 

Discotic Liquid Crystals

Charge transport in polymer and small molecule organic semiconductors (OSCs)

Magnetic field effects on OSC devices

Nanoparticles and OSC-nanoparticle devices and charge interactions

OSCs for radiation detection applications

Charge transport and radiation detection using perovskite materials

Teaching

My teaching

I am currently module organiser for:

SPA5201 Physics Laboratory

and

SPA6403 Statistical Physics

Research

Research Interests:

I was awarded my PhD in Physics in 1999 by Queen Mary and Westfield College for my work on transient photoconduction measurements on semiconducting Discotic Liquid Crystals in collaboration with the University of Leeds - Centre for Self-Organising Molecular Systems (SOMS). More specifically, I carried out Time of Flight (ToF) measurements on π bonded triphenylene systems, obtaining charge carrier mobilities and ranges and probing the trapping dynamics in different phases. This was followed by post-doctoral research at Queen Mary and Imperial College measuring charge transport in various organic systems, including binary discotic mixtures, polymer semiconductors and blends (e.g. donor-acceptor mixtures), including the electric field and temperature dependence of the transport. I was appointed lecturer at the Department of Physics at Queen Mary, University of London in 2003 and began an external industrial collaboration with Merck Chemicals Ltd on charge transport in reactive mesogens and polymeric semiconductors which enabled funding for my first two PhD students. I also undertook academic collaborations on Organic Magneto-Resistance (OMR – with Prof. W. P. Gillin, Physics, Queen Mary), on radio frequency (dielectric) applications of organic semiconductors (with Dr. R. S. Donnan and Dr. R. Dubrovka, Electrical Engineering, Queen Mary) and on the charge transport properties of blended and co-polymerised organic semiconductors (with Prof. N. Stingelin, Materials Science and Prof M. Heeney, Chemistry, Imperial College). The research on the microscopic mechanisms of OMR continues to date as does the work on tuneable dielectric applications of polymer semiconductors which was successfully funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences research council in 2013. In 2008 I begun a collaboration with Prof. A. J. Drew and coworkers (Physics, Queen Mary) using muon spectroscopy methods to probe spin and charge dynamics in organic semiconductors. The research was complemented by transient conductivity work clarifying the charge injection mechanisms and identifying the dominant carriers operating in organic semiconductor based spin valves. In 2015 I begun a collaboration with Dr. A. J. Bevan (Particle Physics, Queen Mary) in applying polymer semiconductors and multi-component blends for radiation detection which has been funded industrially by AWE since 2016.  During my sabbatical in Sichuan University in 2016 I began a collaboration with Prof. K. Yu in the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Physics investigating the charge transfer between semiconducting polymer matrices and quantum dots and nanoparticles which allow us to identify the presence, nature and energetics of surface trap states.

I am a founding member of the Detector Development Group at the School of Physics and Astronomy, Queen Mary University of London.

Overall I have supervised and co-supervised 15 successful PhD candidates and I am currently supervising a further two as second supervisor. I have authored and co-authored 72 articles (excluding conference proceedings) to date (please see publications list)

Examples of research funding:

2020 to 2022 New applicant scheme, STFC (ST/V000039/1) £7.5k

2020 to 2021 AACVD perovskites for commercial PVs and radiation detectors, EPSRC/STFC IAA, £49k

2019 to 2020 Thermal Neutron CVD Diamond Detector Development IAA Project, STFC IAA, £18.5k

2019 to 2023 PhD Studentship support: Fani \Eirini Taifakou, AWE Plc. (contract number 30469473), £48.3k

2016 to 2020 Full PhD studentship: Muhammad Ali, AWE Plc. (contract number 30406548), £175k

2015 to 2016 Organic Neutron Detectors (OND 2), Innovations Fund, £10k

2013 to 2016 Active Quasi-Optics for High-Power THz Science, EPSRC ICT Research Joint Grant:

(EP/K038125/1), £465k

2012 to 2012 Industrial Group Projects, Institute of Physics, £15k

2006 to 2008 CASE studentship support: Seema Barard, Merck Chemicals UK, £13.6k

2003 to 2006 CASE for new Academics: Rodney Baldwin, EPSRC and Merck Chemicals UK, £53k (EPSRC) + £4.5k (Merck)

Publications

Selected Publications:

Solution-Processed Donor–Acceptor Poly(3-hexylthiophene):Phenyl-C61-butyric Acid Methyl Ester Diodes for Low-Voltage α Particle Detection, Fani Eirini Taifakou, Muhammad Ali, Joanna Borowiec, Xiaoqi Liu, Peter A. Finn, Christian B. Nielsen, Cozmin Timis, Tamsin Nooney, Adrian Bevan, and Theo Kreouzis, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 2021 13 (5), 6470-6479 https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.0c22210

 

Room-temperature formation of CdS magic-size clusters in aqueous solutions assisted by primary amines, Wushuang Wan, Meng Zhang, Min Zhao, Nelson Rowell, Chunchun Zhang, Shanling Wang, Theo Kreouzis, Hongsong Fan, Wen Huang & Kui Yu, Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 4199 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18014-6

 

Energetics of Non-Radiative Surface Trap States in Nanoparticles Monitored by Time of Flight Photoconduction Measurements on Nanoparticle-Polymer Blends. Guo, Xiaoqing; Gong, Qianxun; Borowiec, Joanna; Zhang, Sijie; Han, Shuo; Zhang, Meng; Willis, Maureen; Kreouzis, Theo; Yu, Kui, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2019, 11, 40, 37184–37192 1021/acsami.9b07852

 

Modelling and fitting the Polaron Pair Magnetoconductance model to obtain a realistic local hyperfine field in Tris-(8-hydroxyquinoline)aluminium based diodes. Zhichao Weng, William P. Gillin & Theo Kreouzis, Scientific Reports volume 9, Article number: 3439 (2019) , 10.1038/s41598-019-40132-5

 

Formation of colloidal alloy semiconductor CdTeSe magic-size clusters at room temperature. Dong Gao, Xiaoyu Hao, Nelson Rowell, Theo Kreouzis, David J. Lockwood, Shuo Han, Hongsong Fan, Hai Zhang, Chunchun Zhang, Yingnan Jiang, Jianrong Zeng, Meng Zhang & Kui Yu, Nature Communications volume 10, Article number: 1674 (2019) 10.1038/s41467-019-09705-w

Taming Charge Transport in Semiconducting Polymers with Branched Alkyl Side Chains. Bob C. Schroeder, Tadanori Kurosawa, Tianren Fu, Yu‐Cheng Chiu, Jaewan Mun, Ging‐Ji, Nathan Wang, Xiaodan Gu, Leo Shaw, James W. E. Kneller, Theo Kreouzis, Michael F. Toney, Zhenan Bao, Advanced Functional Materials, Volume27, Issue34, September 13, 2017, 1701973 10.1002/adfm.201701973

 

There follows a full list of publications, including conference proceedings.

 

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