President's International Advisory Council

Richard Henry Friend

Cavendish Professor of Physics, University of Cambridge
United Kingdom

 

Professor Sir Richard Henry Friend, FRS and FREng, is Cavendish Professor of Physics and a Fellow of St. John's College at the University of Cambridge. Professor Friend is world renowned for pioneering the physics and engineering of semiconductor devices made with carbon-based semiconducting polymers.

He has shown that polymers can be processed to form high-performing semiconductor devices, and his research group was the first to demonstrate using polymers: clean operation of field-effect transistors, light-emitting diodes, efficient photovoltaic diodes, optically-pumped lasing, directly-printed polymer transistor circuits and light-emitting transistors. This work has revolutionized the understanding of the electronic properties of polymeric semiconductors, which are now recognized to be very suitable for use in semiconductor devices. It has also made possible new applications for semiconductors, particularly for solid-state light-emitting displays using polymer light-emitting diodes.

Products based on these discoveries, including cell phone displays, are now in the market. The impact of this technology may prove to be of immense significance: the fabrication of semiconductor devices and circuits by direct printing is radically different from the traditional patterning and process technologies of inorganic semiconductors, and will allow directly-printed semiconductor circuits to be manufactured at much reduced cost. This work was developed both within the University of Cambridge and also through the formation of two companies, Cambridge Display Technology and Plastic Logic.

Professor Friend has over 700 publications in scientific journals and more than 40 patents. He has been identified by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) as the most-cited UK-based scientist working in the physical sciences over the decade 1990-1999. He has also been listed by ISI as one of the 2 most-cited physicists based in the UK.

In March 2003, as the 81st recipient of the Faraday Medal of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, Richard Friend joined a distinguished roll of honour that commenced in 1922 with Oliver Heaviside. Professor Friend was knighted for "Services to Physics" in the Queen's birthday honours List in 2003. In 2009, Professor Friend was a co-winner of the King Faisal International Prize for Science.