Ludwigs groups

The Ludwigs team is looking for a doctoral researcher to work on a project on mixed ionic-electronic transport of mixed conducting polymers with targeted applications as actuators in soft robotics and switchable organic electrochemical devices.

The project focuses on synthetic design of novel mixed conducting polymer architectures, which may involve both classical conducting polymer synthesis, post-polymerization, but also electropolymerization strategies. 

Correlations between ionic and electronic transport of differently processed materials shall give novel insights into charge mechanisms and their dependencies on molecular and mesoscopic design. This involves the crucial interplay between good crystallinity for optimized charge transport and porous morphologies to facilitate ion charge compensation. To gain a fundamental understanding of the mixed conducting properties in-situ electrochemical experiments shall be applied (e.g., in-situ UV-vis, quartz crystal microbalance, atomic force microscopy). One of the main questions is how the combination of morphology, doping state and choice of ions affects the films in terms of swelling and reversible switching. 

For the project a chemistry and/or nano and materials science background is beneficial. The work will involve polymer synthesis, advanced electrochemistry techniques, and morphology and electrochemical device characterization in a highly interdisciplinary research environment. Close collaboration with the other doctoral researchers within the GRK2948 is expected.