Jungjin Yoon

Water desalination via capacitive deionization: what is it and what can we expect from it?

Capacitive deionization (CDI) is an emerging technology for the facile removal of charged ionic species from aqueous solutions, and is currently being widely explored for water desalination applications. The technology is based on ion electrosorption at the surface of a pair of electrically charged electrodes, commonly composed of highly porous carbon materials. The CDI community has grown exponentially over the past decade, driving tremendous advances via new cell architectures and system designs, the implementation of ion exchange membranes, and alternative concepts such as flowable carbon electrodes and hybrid systems employing a Faradaic (battery) electrode. Also, vast improvements have been made towards unraveling the complex processes inherent to interfacial electrochemistry, including the modelling of kinetic and equilibrium aspects of the desalination process. In our perspective, we critically review and evaluate the current state-of-the-art of CDI technology and provide definitions and performance metric nomenclature in an effort to unify the fast-growing CDI community. We also provide an outlook on the emerging trends in CDI and propose future research and development directions.

Effects of comonomers and shear on the melt intercalation of styrenics/clay nanocomposites

Abstract The effect of polar comonomers introduced into polystyrene (PS) chains on the melt intercalation into organosilicate is investigated in terms of shear and annealing time. In the case, where the interaction between polymers and silicate layers is relatively weak, e.g. PS/organosilicate hybrids, it is difficult for the polymer chains to diffuse into interlayers of organosilicate and the hybrids are unstable under shear. For hybrids in which the interaction is enhanced by incorporating polar comonomers, e.g. acrylonitrile (AN) and methylvinyl oxzoline (OZ), their structures are stable even after a long mixing time. However, they do not show an exfoliated structure under the mixing conditions used in this study. The interaction between the comonomer and the silicate surface is investigated indirectly via both X-ray diffractional and FTIR spectral analyses. It is concluded that the structural stability of polymer/organosilicate hybrids is very dependent on the relative magnitude of the interactions between polymers, organic modifiers, and silicate layers.

Superflexible, high-efficiency perovskite solar cells utilizing graphene electrodes: towards future foldable power sources

With rapid and brilliant progress in performance over recent years, perovskite solar cells have drawn increasing attention for portable power source applications. Their advantageous features such as high efficiency, low cost, light weight and flexibility should be maximized if a robust and reliable flexible transparent electrode is offered. Here we demonstrate highly efficient and reliable super flexible perovskite solar cells using graphene as a transparent electrode. The device performance reaches 16.8% with no hysteresis comparable to that of the counterpart fabricated on a flexible indium-tin-oxide electrode showing a maximum efficiency of 17.3%. The flexible devices also demonstrate superb stability against bending deformation, maintaining >90% of its original efficiency after 1000 bending cycles and 85% even after 5000 bending cycles with a bending radius of 2 mm. This overwhelming bending stability highlights that perovskite photovoltaics with graphene electrodes can pave the way for rollable and foldable photovoltaic applications.

Moth‐Eye TiO2 Layer for Improving Light Harvesting Efficiency in Perovskite Solar Cells

A moth-eye nanostructured mp-TiO2 film using conventional lithography, nano-imprinting and polydimethyl-siloxane (PDMS) stamping methods is demonstrated for the first time. Power conversion efficiency of the moth-eye patterned perovskite solar cell is improved by ≈11%, which mainly results from increasing light harvesting efficiency by structural optical property.

Precise Morphology Control and Continuous Fabrication of Perovskite Solar Cells Using Droplet-Controllable Electrospray Coating System

Herein, we developed a novel electrospray coating system for continuous fabrication of perovskite solar cells with high performance. Our system can systemically control the size of CH3NH3PbI3 precursor droplets by modulating the applied electrical potential, shown to be a crucial factor for the formation of perovskite films. As a result, we have obtained pinhole-free and large grain-sized perovskite solar cells, yielding the best PCE of 13.27% with little photocurrent hysteresis. Furthermore, the average PCE through the continuous coating process was 11.56 ± 0.52%. Our system demonstrates not only the high reproducibility but also a new way to commercialize high-quality perovskite solar cells.

Carbon-sandwiched perovskite solar cell

Promising perovskite solar cell technology with soaring power conversion efficiencies has the common problems of low stability and high cost. This work provides a solution to these problems by employing a carbon sandwich structure, in which the fullerene bottom layer solves the stability issue and the carbon nanotube top electrode layer offers the merits of having high stability and being low-cost. Devices fabricated using different hole-transporting materials infiltrated into carbon nanotube networks were examined for their performance and stability under constant illumination in air. Polymeric hole-transporting layers show much higher stability when combined with carbon nanotubes due to their compact nature and stronger interaction with the carbon network. As a result, the encapsulated device showed high stability both in air and under light illumination, maintaining up to 80% of the initial efficiency after 2200 hours under actual operation conditions. Cost analysis also shows that using the polymeric hole-transporting materials in carbon nanotube films brings the fabrication cost down to less than 5.5% that of conventional devices. Our study proposes a promising cell structure toward highly stable and low-cost perovskite photovoltaic technologies for the future.

Perovskite Solar Cells: Moth-Eye TiO2 Layer for Improving Light Harvesting Efficiency in Perovskite Solar Cells (Small 18/2016)

A moth-eye patterned mesoporous (mp) TiO2 layer is fabricated in the form of submicron scale by using lithography, nano-imprinting and polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS) stamping methods. On page 2443, M. Choi, N.-G. Park, and co-workers demonstrate an excellent light harvesting property of perovskite solar cell by employing the moth-eye nanostructured mp-TiO2 film. These novel fabrication methods are expected to be optically beneficial to opto-electronic devices.