Richard Friend

Friend was educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining a PhD in 1979 under the supervision of Abe Yoffe.{{cite thesis |degree=PhD |first=Richard Henry|last=Friend |title=Transport properties and lattice instabilities in one and two dimensional metals |publisher=University of Cambridge |year=1979 |url=http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.456002|author-link=Richard Friend}}

Friend's research has been applied to development of polymer field effect transistors, light-emitting diodes, photovoltaic diodes, optically pumped lasing and directly printed polymer transistors. He pioneered the study of organic polymers and the electronic properties of molecular semiconductors. He is one of the principal investigators in the new Cambridge-based Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) on nanotechnology and co-founder of Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) and Plastic Logic. Friend has co-authored over 1,000 publications.{{AcademicSearch|12812336|noedit}}{{Scopus|id=7202777700}}

In March 2003 Friend won the IEE's Faraday Medal. He was knighted for "services to physics" in the 2003 Birthday Honours.

Friend received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2006{{Cite web|url=http://www1.hw.ac.uk/annual-review/2006/people_awards.html|title=Annual Review 2006 : People, Honours and Awards|website=www1.hw.ac.uk|access-date=30 March 2016|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160413051238/http://www1.hw.ac.uk/annual-review/2006/people_awards.html|archive-date=13 April 2016|df=dmy-all}}

In 2009, Friend was awarded the Institute of Physics Katharine Burr Blodgett Medal and Prize with Dr David Ffye.{{cite web |url=http://www.iop.org/about/awards/gold/burr-blodgett/medallists/page_38462.html| title=2009 Business and Innovation medal |access-date=22 December 2019}}

In 2010, Friend was elected as one of the three laureates of Millennium Technology Prize for the development of plastic electronics.{{cite web | title=Professor Sir Richard Friend: Developer of plastic electronics | publisher = Millennium Prize | date= 9 June 2010 | url=http://www.millenniumprize.fi/en/2010-prize/2010-10/professor-sir-richard-friend/ | access-date=10 June 2010 }}

In 2011 he was awarded the Harvey Prize of the Technion in Israel.[http://www.focus.technion.ac.il/Feb11/newsStory.asp?id=136 Harvey Prize 2011] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120320082022/http://www.focus.technion.ac.il/Feb11/newsStory.asp?id=136 |date=20 March 2012 }} He is a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2002.

In 2013, Friend was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to science, engineering, and commercialization of organic polymer semiconductor devices.

His nomination for the Royal Society reads: {{centred pull quote|Distinguished for his experimental study of the electronic properties of novel materials, principally organic materials, both semiconductors and metals, and inorganic materials with "low-dimensional" electronic structure, including layer structure transition metal dichalcogenides and cuprate superconductors. He established the pressure/temperature phase diagrams for transition metal dichalcogenides, showing conditions for CDW (Charge Density Wave) phases and superconducting phases in TaS2, band crossing transition in TiS2 intercalation of transition metal dichalcogenides with various Lewis bases (alkali metals, amines), and use of controlled charge transfer to the host layer to fine-tune electronic structure to establish conditions for CDW superlattice formation, and mechanisms for charge transport.

He has made a major contribution to understanding the conditions for metallic, superconducting, magnetic and insulating ground states in organic charge transfer salts. Established the pressure/temperature phase diagram for the incommensurate and commensurate Charge Density Wave phases of TTF-TCNQ. He made the first observations of de Haas van Alphen oscillations in magnetic susceptibility in an organic metal. He and his group has developed polymer processing techniques for conjugated polymers, and demonstrated non-linear electronic excitations through electrical and optical measurements. First construction of MOSFET (Metal Insulator Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) with polyacetylene as active semiconductor, and demonstration of novel mechanism of operation, with novel behaviour and made the first construction of efficient, large area, polymeric semi-conductor LED's (Light Emitting Diodes), based on polyphenylene-vinylene.{{cite web |url=http://royalsociety.org/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqCmd=show.tcl&dsqSearch=(RefNo==%27EC%2F1993%2F12%27) |title=EC/1993/12: Friend, Richard Henry. Library and Archive Catalogue |publisher=The Royal Society |archive-date=3 April 2014 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20140403205833/http://royalsociety.org/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqCmd=show.tcl&dsqSearch=(RefNo=='EC/1993/12') |location=London |url-status=dead |df=dmy-all }}}}

Friend lives in Cambridge with his wife, Carol Anne Maxwell (née Beales) with whom he has two daughters.

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Category:British physicists

Category:Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge

Category:People educated at Rugby School

Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge

Category:Fellows of the Royal Society

Category:Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering

Category:Academic staff of the National University of Singapore

Category:Knights Bachelor

Category:British polymer scientists and engineers

Category:Living people

Category:1953 births

Category:Cavendish Professors of Physics