Russell Holmes

Russell J. Holmes is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota, College of Science and Engineering. He holds the Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor titles, and serves as Executive Officer for Materials Science and Engineering. His research focuses on organic and hybrid semiconductor materials for electronic and optoelectronic applications, including solar cells, OLEDs, and organic lasers.

• Current students: Wan-Ju Hsu, Evgeny Pakhomenko, Siliang He, Yicheng Liu, Emma Pettit
• Alumni: 18 Ph.D. and 4 M.S. graduates

Holmes' work bridges physics, chemistry, and electrical engineering in organic semiconductor systems. His group develops scalable vapor transport deposition techniques for perovskite films, studies exciton transport mechanisms in photovoltaics, and engineers polarization effects in OLEDs. Recent projects include self-assembled photonic structures and interfacial degradation analysis.

His team's publications explore thin film morphology control, exciton dynamics, and device stability. They've developed methodologies to separate geminate/non-geminate recombination losses and created tunable microstructured organic optoelectronic devices.

• Distinguished McKnight University Professor
• Distinguished Teaching Professor
• Christenson Chair in Renewable Energy

Holmes advises active Ph.D. candidates and has mentored 22 graduate students to completion. His labs (419, 423, 481 Amundson Hall) conduct materials processing, device fabrication, and optical/electronic characterization. Funding comes from the Department of Energy, Meta, Microsoft, NSF, and the Christenson family endowment.