Prof. Larry Luer

Larry Lüer received his diploma (1996) and PhD (2001) in Physical Chemistry from Tübingen University, working on oxygen effects on photoconductivity in small molecules. In 2001, he went to Politecnico di Milano on a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship to work with Guglielmo Lanzani and Giulio Cerullo in femtosecond spectrocopy studying ultrafast charge carrier generation. In 2002, he returned to University of Tübingen as a postdoctoral fellow to work on oxygen induced degradation of polymers in an industry driven project. In 2003 he started a tenure track position as senior researcher at CNR/INFM Politecnico di Milano, applying ultrabroadband pulses to study energy and charge transfer phenomena in the condensed phase, in the groups of Giulio Cerullo and Guglielmo Lanzani. In 2007, this position became permanent. In 2009, he started working at IMDEA Nanociencia as a senior researcher and Ramon y Cajal fellow. Since 2012 he is responsible for the femtosecond spectroscopy lab at IMDEA Nanociencia which is part of the Madrid network of user labs (Madri+D Redlab #280).

Larry Lüer is member of several National and European research projects with strong industrial participa- tion, and has coordinated two European Marie Curie training networks.

We combine advanced methods for spectroscopy and data analysis in order to resolve and quantify the elementary photophysical pathways occurring in organic optoelectronic devices. We develop destruction- free methods that are material and layer sensitive thus allowing to trace back device performance to first principles. All of our work is done in intense collaboration with international leading industries and groups working in device technology, material science and biophysics.

1. Stability and efficiency of organic solar cells (OCS). These devices are very promising for decentralized energy production close to the customer but suffer from limited efficiency and stability. Both prob- lems are related to undesired loss processes in the complex photovoltaic event chain. Our techniques allow us to single out dominant loss processes caused by oxygen induced or thermal degradation, and to suggest improvement strategies to our industrial partners (projects ESTABLIS, POCAONTAS, FotoCarbon + in-house collaborations).
2. Excitonic effects in condensed matter. We combine matrix based data analysis methods with quantum chemistry to model two-dimensional electronic spectra of natural light harvesting complexes and other low-dimensional materials. This allows us to understand the details of the interactions of excitons with the environment. This knowledge can be used to design novel optoelectronic devices (collaborations with Politecnico di Milano, University of Glasgow, and in-house). 31