Franky So
Walter and Ida Freeman Distinguished Professor
Associate Department Head

- fso@ncsu.edu
- Engineering Building I (EB1) 3070B
- Visit My Website
Dr. So received his PhD from the University of Southern California. He worked for Motorola and OSRAM Opto-Semiconductors for 14 years before he became a professor at the University of Florida. He was a Rolf E Hummel Professor of Electronic Materials in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Florida. Since 2015, he joined the North Carolina State University and is currently the Walter and Ida Freeman Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. Dr. So is currently a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, IEEE, OSA, SID, and SPIE. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Materials Science and Engineering Reports and Associate Editor of four other research journals. He chairs the OLED Symposium of the SPIE Optics and Photonics conference. Dr. So holds 100 issued patents and has 14 pending. He has over 200 publications and has a Google H-index of 73.
So’s current research focus is on electronics properties and photophysics of organic semiconductors and quantum dots used for OLEDs, solar cells, photodetectors, sensors and transistors. His recent works include: use of corrugated structures to fabricate OLEDs and perovskite solar cells, charge transport, injection and charge transfer excitons in organic semiconductors, dielectric properties of polymer-fullerene blends for photovoltaics, vertical permeable metal base transistors, vertical field effect transistors, PbS quantum dots photodetectors and phototransistors, and ferroelectric transistors.
Education
Electrical Engineering
University of Southern California
Materials Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Physics
Hamilton College
Publications
- Consensus statement: Standardized reporting of power-producing luminescent solar concentrator performance
- Yang, C., Atwater, H. A., Baldo, M. A., Baran, D., Barile, C. J., Barr, M. C., … Lunt, R. R. (2022, January 19), JOULE, Vol. 1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2021.12.004
- Curved Mirror Arrays for Light Extraction in Top-Emitting Organic Light-Emitting Diodes
- Amoah, S., Fu, X., Yin, S., Dong, Q., Dong, C., & So, F. (2022, February 15), ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES, Vol. 2. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.1c21128
- Room-temperature superfluorescence in hybrid perovskites and its origins
- Biliroglu, M., Findik, G., Mendes, J., Seyitliyev, D., Lei, L., Dong, Q., … Gundogdu, K. (2022), NATURE PHOTONICS, 4. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-00974-4
- Balancing crop production and energy harvesting in organic solar-powered greenhouses
- Ravishankar, E., Charles, M., Xiong, Y., Henry, R., Swift, J., Rech, J., … Brendan T. O'Connor. (2021), CELL REPORTS PHYSICAL SCIENCE, 3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2021.100381
- Band Edge Control of Quasi-2D Metal Halide Perovskites for Blue Light-Emitting Diodes with Enhanced Performance
- Worku, M., Ben-Akacha, A., Sridhar, S., Frick, J. R., Yin, S., He, Q., … Ma, B. (2021, August 8), ADVANCED FUNCTIONAL MATERIALS, Vol. 8. https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202103299
- Directional Polarized Light Emission from Thin-Film Light-Emitting Diodes
- Fu, X., Mehta, Y., Chen, Y.-A., Lei, L., Zhu, L., Barange, N., … So, F. (2021), ADVANCED MATERIALS. https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202006801
- Emitting organically
- Pile, D. F. P., & So, F. (2021, September), NATURE PHOTONICS, Vol. 9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-021-00869-w
- High-temperature superfluorescence in methyl ammonium lead iodide
- Findik, G., Biliroglu, M., Seyitliyev, D., Mendes, J., Barrette, A., Ardekani, H., … Gundogdu, K. (2021, June 21), NATURE PHOTONICS, Vol. 6. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-021-00830-x
- Interconnecting layers for tandem organic solar cells
- Ho, C. H. Y., Kothari, J., Fu, X., & So, F. (2021), MATERIALS TODAY ENERGY, 9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mtener.Y021.100707
- Light extraction in tandem organic light emitting diodes
- Fu, X., Yin, S., Chen, Y.-A., Zhu, L., Dong, Q., Chang, C.-H., & So, F. (2021), APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS, 8. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0057325