Dr Paul Shaw

Biography

I completed my PhD on exciton diffusion in conjugated polymers in 2009 at the University of St Andrews before moving to The University of Queensland as a postdoctoral fellow working on the development of fluorescent dendrimers for the detection of explosives and the photophysics of organic semiconductors. In November 2011 I was awarded an ARC DECRA fellowship.

Research Interest

Photophysics of Organic Semiconductors The development of organic semiconductors has the potential to revolutionise the design and fabrication of future optoelectronic devices. Such devices cover a wide range of applications and include solar cells, light-emitting diodes, transistors, lasers and photodiodes. Optimising the performance of these devices poses a significant challenge, as each is the product of multiple physical processes. My main research lies in the use of spectroscopy to understand the intrinsic properties of organic semiconductors outside of a device structure and then feeding this knowledge back into materials and optoelectronic device design. One focus of my research will be detecting the presence of long-lived non-emissive states that are normally difficult to observe but which can play a critical role in the operation of a device. Explosives-sensing with Fluorescence Quenching Rapid and reliable detection of explosives remains one of the most pressing security challenges faced today. Sensing based on the fluorescence quenching of organic semiconductors is one of the most attractive solutions to this problem because it can achieve high sensitivity in a handheld device. My research lies in the development of sensors based on fluorescent dendrimers and understanding how their sensing properties are related to their molecular structure.