Nanostructuring discotic molecules on ITO support

Liquid Crystals: Versatile Self-Organized Smart Soft Materials

Smart soft materials are envisioned to be the building blocks of the next generation of advanced devices and digitally augmented technologies. In this context, liquid crystals (LCs) owing to their responsive and adaptive attributes could serve as promising smart soft materials. LCs played a critical role in revolutionizing the information display industry in the 20th century. However, in the turn of the 21st century, numerous beyond-display applications of LCs have been demonstrated, which elegantly exploit their controllable stimuli-responsive and adaptive characteristics. For these applications, new LC materials have been rationally designed and developed. In this Review, we present the recent developments in light driven chiral LCs, i.e., cholesteric and blue phases, LC based smart windows that control the entrance of heat and light from outdoor to the interior of buildings and built environments depending on the weather conditions, LC elastomers for bioinspired, biological, and actuator applications, LC based biosensors for detection of proteins, nucleic acids, and viruses, LC based porous membranes for the separation of ions, molecules, and microbes, living LCs, and LCs under macro- and nanoscopic confinement. The Review concludes with a summary and perspectives on the challenges and opportunities for LCs as smart soft materials. This Review is anticipated to stimulate eclectic ideas toward the implementation of the nature's delicate phase of matter in future generations of smart and augmented devices and beyond.

Ultralong Ordered Nanowires from the Concerted Self-Assembly of Discotic Liquid Crystal and Solvent Molecules

The realization of long, aligned molecular wires is a great challenge, and a variety of approaches have been proposed. Interestingly, hexapentyloxytriphenylene (HAT5) discotic liquid crystal molecules, a model system of molecules with flat and aromatic cores, can spontaneously form well-aligned, micrometer long, yet only tens of nanometers thick, nanowires on solid surfaces. We have investigated the formation mechanism of these wires using different solvents with selected characteristics, including chemical structure, boiling point, vapor pressure, and surface tension. When casting from toluene and benzene solutions, atomic force microscopy reveals that the discotics spontaneously form very long and thin wires, self-aligning along a common orientation. If instead dodecane or heptane are used, different and in general thicker structures are obtained. The chemical structure of the solvent appears to have a key role, coupling to the liquid crystal self-assembly by allowing solvent molecules to enter the ordered structure if their design matches the core of HAT5 molecules, thereby guiding the assembly. However, other aspects are also relevant in the assembly, including the nature of the substrate and the rate of solvent evaporation, and these can favor or interfere with the self-assembly into long structures. The use of solvents with aromatic structure is advantageous not only because it affects the geometry of the assembly, promoting long wire formation, but it is also compatible with good quality of the intermolecular order, as suggested by a high anisotropy of the Raman spectra of the nanowires formed from these solvents. Finally, the electrical properties of ordered systems show a clearly higher electrical conductivity compared to the disorganized aggregates.

Increasing organic solar cell efficiency with polymer interlayers

We demonstrate how organic solar cell efficiency can be increased by introducing a pure polymer interlayer between the PEDOT:PSS layer and the polymer:fullerene blend. We observe an increase in device efficiency with three different material systems over a number of devices. Using both electrical characterization and numerical modeling we show that the increase in efficiency is caused by optical absorption in the pure polymer layer and hence efficient charge separation at the polymer bulkheterojunction interface.

Hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene in organic electronics

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are in a class of functional organic compounds with increasing importance in organic electronics. Their tunable photophysical properties and typically strong intermolecular associations make them ideal materials in applications where control of charge mobility is essential. Hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene (HBC) is a disc-shaped PAH that self-associates into columnar stacks through strong π–π interactions. By decorating the periphery of the HBC molecule with various substituents, a range of properties and functions can be obtained including solution processability, liquid crystallinity, and semiconductivity. In this review article, the synthesis, properties, and functions of HBC derivatives are presented with focus on work published in the last five years.

Optimization of hybrid organic-inorganic interdigitated photovoltaic device structure using a 2D diffusion model

To improve the efficiency of organic photovoltaic devices the inclusion of semiconducting nanoparticles such as PbS has been used to enhance near-infrared absorption. Additionally the use of interdigitated heterojunctions has been explored as a means of improving charge extraction. In this paper we provide a two-dimensional model taking into account these approaches with the aim of predicting an optimized device geometry to maximize the efficiency. The steady-state exciton population has been calculated in each of the active regions taking into account the full optical response based on using a finite difference approach to obtain approximate numerical solutions to the 2D exciton diffusion equation. On the basis of this we calculate the contribution of each active material to the device short circuit current and power conversion efficiency. We show that optimized structures can lead to power conversions efficiencies of ∼50% compared to a maximum of ∼17% for planar heterojunction devices. To achieve this the interdigitated region thickness should be ∼800 nm with PbS and C(60) widths of ∼60 and 20 nm, respectively. Even modest nanopatterning using much thinner active regions provides improvements in efficiency and may be approached using a variety of methods including nanoimprinting lithography, nanotemplating, or the incorporation of presynthesized nanorod structures.