Abdulaziz Aldubayan

Advisors: Natalie Stingelin and Antonio Facchetti

will defend a doctoral thesis entitled,

Engineering Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Materials for Versatile Flexible Electronics

On

Monday, September 8, at 2:00 p.m.
MoSE 3201A 

and

 Virtually via MS Teams

Committee
            Prof. Natalie Stingelin – School of Materials Science and Engineering (advisor)

            Prof. Antonio Facchetti – School of Materials Science and Engineering (advisor)

            Prof. Anju Toor – School of Materials Science and Engineering.

        Prof. Suman Datta – School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

            Prof. Emmanouil Tentzeris – School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Abstract
Flexible electronics is an emerging technological paradigm that enables a wide range of new commercial products and impacts many aspects of daily life. However, this field faces challenges in performance, stability, and scalable fabrication. To address these challenges, new materials are needed. One promising approach is the development of hybrid organic-inorganic systems that combine the advantages of both components. In this thesis, I engineer polyvinyl alcohol (PVAl) with mono- and polynuclear titanium oxide hydrate species to create hybrid systems with tunable electronic properties and device functions, depending on composition, enabling various electronic applications. For example, titanium oxide hydrates:PVAl hybrid of 60 vol% inorganic content exhibits both bipolar and volatile resistive switching at low voltages (~2 V), depending on electroforming. Another application is a hybrid-based UV sensor for personalized monitoring, enabling both real-time and cumulative detection. Finally, we fabricate and characterize hybrid-based organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) using a 10 vol% hybrid system as the gate dielectric, showing superior performance compared to PVAl-based devices, highlighting the potential of the 10 vol% hybrid system as an advanced dielectric material. Overall, this thesis establishes titanium oxide hydrates:PVAl hybrids as a versatile platform for next-generation electronic and sensing applications.