A kick-off meeting for the 2016 ASPIRE League Research Grant (Type 1) was held on March 24 at Tokyo Tech Front. Organized by the project’s principal researcher, Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Michinobu of the School of Materials and Chemical Technology of Tokyo Tech, the meeting brought co-researchers for the grant, Professor Manusn Chan (HKUST), Associate Professor Qichun Zhang (NTU), and Assistant Professor Steve Park (KAIST), together to exchange ideas and discuss the direction of the project.

Michinobu opened the meeting with an introduction to Tokyo Tech and explanation of the background to the collaborative research project, which focuses on organic thin film devices based on narrow band gap semiconducting polymers. Dr. Yang Wang, who has synthesized most of the semiconducting polymers in this project, presented on behalf of the Tokyo Tech group, and the three co-researchers for the grant also presented recent achievements.

Finally, a group of Tokyo Tech students presented a poster about their research projects. The project aims to demonstrate new applications of the developed narrow band gap semiconducting polymers.