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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

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.

A beaker filled with water where a small solar cell is dissolved.

The next-generation solar cell is fully recyclable

In a study published in Nature, researchers at LiU have developed a method to recycle all parts of a perovskite solar cell repeatedly without environmentally hazardous solvents. The recycled solar cell has the same efficiency as the original one.

Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM)

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

Jiajun Qin, Jia Zhang, Xianjie Liu, Yu Wang, Heyong Wang, Utkarsh Singh, Yanyan Wang, Haoliang Wang, Tianxiang Hu, Yiqiang Zhan, Yipeng Tang, Bin Hu, Constantin Bach, Carsten Deibel, Wei-Xin Ni, Sergey Simak, Igor Abrikosov, Mats Fahlman, Feng Gao (2025) Surfactant-induced hole concentration enhancement for highly efficient perovskite light-emitting diodes Nature Materials (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Rokas Jasiunas, Vidmantas Jasinskas, Jianwei Yu, Nakul Jain, Xuehong Zhou, Jun Yuan, Rui Zhang, Huotian Zhang, Bei Yang, Andrius Gelzinis, Yingping Zou, Vidmantas Gulbinas, Feng Gao (2025) Navigating the relationship between voltage losses and efficiency in organic solar cells Organic electronics, Vol. 140, Article 107211 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Ao Liu, Jun Xi, Hanlin Cen, Jinfei Dai, Yi Yang, Cheng Liu, Shuai Guo, Xiaofang Lie, Xiaotian Guo, Feng Yang, Meng Li, Haoxuan Li, Fei Zhang, Huagui La, Fan Fui, Shuaifeng Hu, Junke Wang, Seongrok Seo, Henry J. Snaith, Jinghui Li, Jiajun Luo, Hongjin Lim, Yun Gao, Xingliang Dai, Jia Zhang, Feng Gao, Zhengxun Lai, You Meng, Johnny C. Ho, Wen Lit, Yuntao Wu, Liping Du, Sai Baia, Huihui Zhu, Xianhang Lin, Can Deng, Liyi Yang, Liu Tang, Ahmad Imtia, Hanxiang Zhi, Xi Lu, Heng Li, Xiangyu Sun, Yicheng Zhao, Jian Xu, Xiaojian She, Jafar Iqbal Khany, Guanglong Ding, Su-Ting Han, Ye Zhou, Ruifu Zhou, Jang-Sik Lee, Geonwoong Park, Youjin Reo, Yong-Young Noh (2025) Roadmap on metal-halide perovskite semiconductors and devices MATERIALS TODAY ELECTRONICS, Vol. 11, Article 100138 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Sankaran Ramesh, Yonghong Wang, Pavel Chabera, Rafael Araujo, Mustafa Aboulsaad, Tomas Edvinsson, Feng Gao, Toenu Pullerits (2025) Coherent Phonons, Localization, and Slow Polaron Formation in Lead-Free Gold Perovskite Advanced Optical Materials (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Xun Xiao, Niansheng Xu, Xueyu Tian, Tiankai Zhang, Bingzheng Wang, Xiaoming Wang, Yeming Xian, Chunyuan Lu, Xiangyu Ou, Yanfa Yan, Licheng Sun, Fengqi You, Feng Gao (2025) Aqueous-based recycling of perovskite photovoltaics Nature (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Yong Wang, Yu Wang, Tiarnan A. S. Doherty, Samuel D. Stranks, Feng Gao, Deren Yang (2025) Octahedral units in halide perovskites Nature Reviews Chemistry (Article, review/survey) Continue to DOI
Chao Li, Jiali Song, Hanjian Lai, Huotian Zhang, Rongkun Zhou, Jinqiu Xu, Haodong Huang, Liming Liu, Jiaxin Gao, Yuxuan Li, Min Hun Jee, Zilong Zheng, Sha Liu, Jun Yan, Xian-Kai Chen, Zheng Tang, Chen Zhang, Han Young Woo, Feng He, Feng Gao, He Yan, Yanming Sun (2025) Non-fullerene acceptors with high crystallinity and photoluminescence quantum yield enable >20% efficiency organic solar cells Nature Materials (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Zhiqi Li, Qi Wei, Yu Wang, Cong Tao, Yatao Zou, Xiaowang Liu, Ziwei Li, Zhongbin Wu, Mingjie Li, Wenbin Guo, Gang Li, Weidong Xu, Feng Gao (2025) Highly bright perovskite light-emitting diodes enabled by retarded Auger recombination Nature Communications, Vol. 16, Article 927 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Chenghao Duan, Kaicheng Zhang, Zijian Peng, Shiang Li, Feilin Zou, Feng Wang, Jiong Li, Zheng Zhang, Chang Chen, Qiliang Zhu, Jianhang Qiu, Xinhui Lu, Ning Li, Liming Ding, Christoph J. Brabec, Feng Gao, Keyou Yan (2025) Durable all-inorganic perovskite tandem photovoltaics Nature, Vol. 637, p. 1111-1117 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Haiyang Chen, Yuting Huang, Rui Zhang, Hongyu Mou, Junyuan Ding, Jiadong Zhou, Zukun Wang, Hongxiang Li, Weijie Chen, Juan Zhu, Qinrong Cheng, Hao Gu, Xiaoxiao Wu, Tianjiao Zhang, Yingyi Wang, Haiming Zhu, Zengqi Xie, Feng Gao, Yaowen Li, Yongfang Li (2025) Organic solar cells with 20.82% efficiency and high tolerance of active layer thickness through crystallization sequence manipulation Nature Materials (Article in journal) Continue to DOI