For inorganic semiconductors crystalline order leads to a band structure which gives rise to drastic differences to the disordered material. An example is the presence of an indirect band gap. For organic semiconductors such effects are typically not considered, since the bands are normally flat, and the band-gap therefore is direct. Herein we show results from electronic structure calculations demonstrating that ordered arrays of porphyrins reveal a small dispersion of occupied and unoccupied bands leading to the formation of a small indirect band gap. We demonstrate herein that such ordered structures can be fabricated by liquid-phase epitaxy and that the corresponding crystalline organic semiconductors exhibit superior photophysical properties, including large charge-carrier mobility and an unusually large charge-carrier generation efficiency. We have fabricated a prototype organic photovoltaic device based on this novel material exhibiting a remarkable efficiency.

Conducting polymers (CPs) have frequently been described as outstanding coating materials for neural microelectrodes, providing significantly reduced impedance or higher charge injection compared to pure metals. Usability has until now, however, been limited by poor adhesion of polymers like poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) to metallic substrates, ultimately precluding long-term applications. The aim of this study was to overcome this weakness of CPs by introducing two novel adhesion improvement strategies that can easily be integrated with standard microelectrode fabrication processes. Iridium Oxide (IrOx) demonstrated exceptional stability for PEDOT coatings, resulting in polymer survival over 10 000 redox cycles and 110 days under accelerated aging conditions at 60 °C. Nanostructured Pt was furthermore introduced as a purely mechanical adhesion promoter providing 10-fold adhesion improvement compared to smooth Pt substrates by simply altering the morphology of Pt. This layer can be realized in a very simple process that is compatible with any electrode design, turning nanostructured Pt into a universal adhesion layer for CP coatings. By the introduction of these adhesion-promoting strategies, the weakness of CP-based neural probes can ultimately be eliminated and true long-term stable use of PEDOT on neural probes will be possible in future electrode generations.

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