On January 20, 2026, a collaborative research team consisting of Academician Shi Yi, Professor Li Yun, and Assistant Professor Wang Qijing from Nanjing University, along with Professor Henning Sirringhaus from the University of Cambridge in the UK and Professor Qiao Jingsi from the Beijing Institute of Technology, published a groundbreaking research paper in Nature Electronics. The paper, titled "Metallic Charge Transport in Conjugated Molecular Bilayers," delves into the phenomenon of metallic transport—where a material's conductivity rises as the temperature drops, a trait previously only seen in inorganic semiconductors like monocrystalline silicon.

Organic semiconductors face significant hurdles in achieving metallic charge transport over a broad temperature range, due to factors such as weak intermolecular forces and substantial structural dynamic disorder. To tackle this, the research team introduced and verified a novel mechanism: the "van der Waals-bridged molecular bilayer transport network."

This innovative approach enhances interlayer charge tunneling and orbital coupling, boosts structural rigidity to minimize molecular vibrations, and reduces Coulomb interactions between charge carriers. As a result, the team made a historic observation: metallic transport across an ultra-wide temperature range, down to 8 K, in undoped organic semiconductor materials. The conductivity soared to an impressive 245 S/cm, with a Hall mobility surpassing 100 cm²/V·s.

This breakthrough shatters the performance barriers of organic field-effect transistors, with conductivity levels nearing those of inorganic semiconductors like heavily doped silicon and wide-bandgap gallium arsenide. It paves the way for new research avenues and applications in high-performance organic electronic materials.

Furthermore, by intentionally introducing defects, the team, for the first time in organic semiconductors, clearly observed disorder-driven metal-insulator phase transitions and their associated quantum critical scaling behavior. This extends the realm of quantum phase transition physics from traditional inorganic semiconductors and strongly correlated electron systems to organic systems, offering an ideal model platform for the study of organic Mott–Anderson systems.