Investigating materials for optoelectronic applications under the special focus of self-organization is very fascinating as it combines research on materials with high importance for modern society such as optical displays (LCD or OLED), plastic electronics, or organic photovoltaics with fundamental questions on basic natural science. Such an interdisciplinary topic covers areas from the synthesis of new materials, to the modelling and the control of their superstructure and finally to their optoelectronic characterization and therefore also requires a highly interdisciplinary and international perspective.

The framework of the “International Research Training Group, IRTG 1404” jointly funded by the DFG (Germany) and KOSEF/NRF (South Korea) represents such an international cooperation. Kookheon Char (SNU, School of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Seoul, South Korea) and Rudolf Zentel (Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany) have assembled an impressive collection of recent output of this fruitful cooperation, published in a special issue in Macromolecular Rapid Communications.

Some highlights of this special issue can now be accessed for free!

• Charge Transport in Electrically Doped Amorphous Organic Semiconductors (Review article by Seung-Jun Yoo and Jang-Joo Kim)
• Energy and Charge Transfer in Nanoscale Hybrid Materials  (Feature article by Thomas Basché, Anne Bottin, Chen Li, Klaus Müllen, Jeong-Hee Kim, Byeong-Hyeok Sohn, Prem Prabhakaran and Kwang-Sup Lee)
• The Impact of Donor–Acceptor Phase Separation on the Charge Carrier Dynamics in pBTTT:PCBM Photovoltaic Blends (Communication by Dominik W Gehrig, Ian A. Howard, Sean Sweetnam, Timothy M. Burke, Michael D. McGehee, and Frédéric Laquai)

If you would like to find out more about the IRTG please have a look at the editorial by Rudolf Zentel and Kookheon Char.