Photo of Feng Gao

Feng Gao

Professor, Head of Unit

Organic and perovskite semiconductors for energy technologies. ERC Grantee (StG2016, CoG2021); Wallenberg Academy Fellow 2017; SSF Future Research Leader 2020; Tage Erlander Prize 2020; Wallenberg Scholar 2024.

Presentation

Prof. Feng Gao is leading a research group focusing on organic and perovskite semiconductors at Linköping University. He works as a full professor at Linköping since 2020. 

Before 2020, Feng Gao was associate professor (2017-2020), assistant professor (2015-2017), and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow (2013-2015) at Linköping. He received his Docent from Linköping in 2016, his PhD degree from the University of Cambridge in 2011, and his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Nanjing University in 2004 and 2007, respectively. He works at the interfaces between physics, chemistry, and materials science, focusing on the development of novel optoelectronic devices for energy technologies.

Research

Prof. Gao’s group dedicates its efforts to energy devices, with the ambition to both improve device performance and understand the underlying fundamentals. Their current investigations include organic semiconductors and metal halide perovskites, with research focuses such as:

Fullerene-free organic solar cells, including low voltage losses, green solvent processing and new applications.

Nature Energy 2016
Nature Materials 2018
Nature Materials (review) 2018
Nature Energy 2019
Nature Energy 2021
Nature Energy 2021
Nature Energy 2023
Nature Photonics 2023

Perovskite solar cells, with a focus on understanding and improving the stability:

Nature 2019
Science 2022

Perovskite LEDs, with the motivation to improve the device performance and also explore new applications:

Nature Photonics 2019
Nature Electronics 2020
Nature Materials (Review) 2021
Nature Communications 2021

Lead-free perovskites, aiming to tune the optoelectronic properties and explore their magnetic properties:

Advanced Materials (Review) 2019
Science Advances 2020

Perovskites for other applications, e.g. X-ray detection and lasers:

Nature Photonics 2022
Advanced Materials 2023

See the full list of publications at Google Schoolar:

Google Scholar

Organic semiconductors

Organic semiconductors have a large potential in low-cost and large-area device applications, benefiting from cheap manufacturing processes such as solution-based roll-to-roll printing.

All device applications previously dominated by inorganic semiconductors have presented opportunities for their organic counterparts. Such applications include solar cells, LEDs, field-effect transistors, lasers, and memory devices.

Metal halide perovskites

Metal halide perovskites have emerged as one of the most popular semiconducting materials since 2009. They have shown unique properties, including:

  • Tunable bandgap
  • High absorption coefficient
  • Broad absorption spectrum
  • High charge carrier mobility
  • Long charge diffusion lengths

These properties enable metal halide perovskites to be used in a broad range of photovoltaic and other optoelectronic applications.

Solar cells

Although the current solar cell market is dominated by silicon-based devices, the recent emergence of solution-processed solar cells based on organic semiconductors and metal halide perovskites has shown great potential for commercial applications. For example, the power conversion efficiency of perovskite solar cells has soared from a few percent to over 25% within the past few years. Such a quick development has never before happened in the history of photovoltaics.

LEDs

LEDs, which emit light by a solid-state process called electroluminescence, are considered the most promising energy-efficient technologies for future lighting and displays. Metal halide perovskites demonstrate strong photoluminescence and tunable emission energy, making them a promising candidate for the next generation of highly efficient LEDs.

Lasers

Electrically pumped lasers are considered as a holy grail in the field of optoelectronics. Recent breakthroughs on optically pumped perovskite lasers and high-performance perovskite LEDs indicate great potential of developing perovskites into a new generation of materials for electrically pumped lasers.

Funding

Prof. Gao's research group is mainly supported by the following funding agencies:

Group and Supervision

Prof. Feng Gao is deeply involved in both the scientific and career development of his group members. The senior researchers in his group have been awarded the prestigious VR (Starting) Grants, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, VINNMER Fellowship. He also values the exchange of ideas: he has sponsored members of his group in exchanges to Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College and EPFL, and his group has hosted visiting students and scholars from Cambridge, Oxford, Zhejiang University, Nanjing University, Nanjing Tech University, Shenzhen University, Queen Mary University of London, and more.

Organisation

News about Feng Gao

Huotian Zhang

Huotian Zhang receives royal scholarship for his solar energy research

For the second year in a row, a researcher at the Division of Optoelectronics at Linköping University, has been awarded the prestigious scholarship from Stiftelsen Konung Carl XVI Gustafs 50-årsfond för vetenskap, teknik och miljö.

Portrait (Feng Gao).

Prestigious physics award for Feng Gao

This year's Göran Gustafsson Prize in Physics goes to LiU professor Feng Gao. His research focuses on how new materials can be used for the next generation of solar cells and LEDs, among other things. The total prize money is SEK 7.5 million.

Researcher hold a glowing sheet of glass with tweezers.

Next generation LEDs are cheap and sustainable

Cost, technical performance and environmental impact – these are the three most important aspects for a new type of LED technology to have a broad commercial impact on society. This has been demonstrated by LiU-researchers in a new study.

Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM)

Excellent undergraduate teaching and research in the areas of biology, chemistry, materials and applied physics and theory and modelling are conducted at this department.

Electronic and photonic materials (EFM)

Our division's research is focused on the development of organic electronics for energy conversion and storage.

Portrait Feng Gao.

Creating the flexible X-ray technology of the future

Professor Feng Gao has been granted SEK 31 million from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation over five years to develop a new type of X-ray technology. The goal is a flexible material that can improve X-ray detector image quality.

Publications

Publication list

2025

Ruiqin Huang, Longbo Yang, Feng Yang, Yuttapoom Puttisong, Qingsong Hu, Guixian Li, Jingnan Hu, Zhaobo Hu, Liang Li, Jiang Tang, Weimin Chen, Yibo Han, Jiajun Luo, Feng Gao (2025) Spin-polarized self-trapped excitons in low-dimensional cesium copper halide Nature Communications, Vol. 16, Article 7264 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Masoud Karimipour, Nil Monros Oliveras, Zhenchuan Tian, Francesco Salutari, Maria Chiara Spadaro, Tiankai Zhang, Naji Vahedigharehchopogh, Jordi Arbiol, Feng Gao, Monica Lira-Cantu (2025) Me-4PACz Functionalized MXene for Halide Perovskite Solar Cells Advanced Science (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Zhigao Huang, Yinjuan Ren, Yiming Wu, Jiajun Qin, Kerong Jiao, Hao Zhang, Van Duong Ta, Feng Gao, Hua Shen, Yue Wang (2025) Sustained Continuous-Wave Lasing in Quantum Dot Microfluids Advanced Materials (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Meng Cai, Wei Liu, Tiankai Zhang, Pengfei Yan, Yuxuan Li, Weiqian Kong, Hangjuan Wu, Zongwei Chen, Zhenkun Gu, Lin Dong, Qun Xu, Yanlin Song, Junjie Ma, Chongxin Shan, Feng Gao (2025) Intermediate-States Mediated 2D MoO3-x Plasmon Enabling Pure-Phased CsPbX3 Photovoltaics with 27.33% Bifacial Efficiency Advanced Materials (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Heyong Wang, Antonella Treglia, Chun-Sheng Jack Wu, Guanhaojie Zheng, Miguel M. de Vries Ibanez, Gianvito Vile, Hui Li, Luca Gregori, Filippo De Angelis, Jianpu Wang, Feng Gao, Annamaria Petrozza (2025) In-Situ Self-Encapsulated Tin-Halide Perovskites for Air-Functional Near-Infrared Light-Emitting Diodes ACS Energy Letters, Vol. 10, p. 3375-3382 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Haixia Hu, Rui Zhang, Dongcheng Jiang, Xinyu Mu, Jicheng Yi, Han Yu, Lik-Kuen Ma, Bin Li, Lingxin Cao, Mengzhen Sha, Jiangkai Sun, Ruohua Gui, Wei Liu, Shijie Liang, Longlong Li, Shufen Huang, Jianyu Yuan, Chengwang Niu, Cunquan Qu, Jun Yuan, Rongkun Zhou, Chen Zhang, Lin Lu, Xiaoyan Du, Kun Gao, Weiwei Li, Shu Kong So, Yingping Zou, Yanming Sun, Xiaotao Hao, Feng Gao, He Yan, Hang Yin (2025) Revealing electron transport connectivity as an important factor influencing stability of organic solar cells Nature Communications, Vol. 16, Article 6546 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Guangkun Song, Tengfei He, Ruohan Wang, Yanni Ouyang, Nakul Jain, Saisai Liu, Bin Kan, Yujie Shang, Jiaqi Li, Xingkai Wang, Zhaoyang Yao, Xiangjian Wan, Chenxi Li, Wei Ma, Yan Zhao, Guankui Long, Chunfeng Zhang, Feng Gao, Yongsheng Chen (2025) Regulate the Singlet-Triplet Energy Gap by Spatially Separating HOMO and LUMO for High Performance Organic Photovoltaic Acceptors Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Article e202506357 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Li Wan, Eunkyung Cho, Rui Zhang, Theis Brock-Nannestad, Zhaohui Wang, Jean-Luc Bredas, Veaceslav Coropceanu, Feng Gao (2025) Giant Circularly Polarized Luminescence Driven by Excited-State Hybridization Between Molecular Emitters and Chiral Environments Advanced Materials (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Gulzada Beket, Anton Zubayer, Leonie Pap, Huagui Lai, Samiran Bairagi, Nakul Jain, Jochen Stahn, Fan Fu, Kenneth Järrendahl, Fredrik Eriksson, Xabier Rodriguez-Martinez, Olle Inganäs, Uli Wuerfel, Thomas Osterberg, Jonas Bergqvist, Feng Gao (2025) Understanding and Addressing the Performance Asymmetry Issue in Semitransparent Laminated Organic Photovoltaic Devices Advanced Functional Materials (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Tianxiao Liu, Zhijun Ren, Yangyang Liu, Yaoyao Zhang, Jing Liang, Fangwen Cheng, Yiran Li, Xiaoyu Shi, Yunjie Dou, Xiaodong Hu, Lingyuan Wang, Siwei Luo, Feifei Wang, Xiaoxiao Peng, Yu Zhao, Wei Wang, Yi Cao, Feng Gao, Shangshang Chen (2025) Efficient perovskite solar modules enabled by a UV-stable and high-conductivity hole transport material Science Advances, Vol. 11, Article eadu3493 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI