Manish Pandey

Orientation Characteristics of Non-regiocontrolled Poly (3-hexyl-thiophene) Film by FTM on Various Liquid Substrates

Orientation characteristics of non-regiocontrolled poly (3-hexylthiophene) (NR-P3HT) films prepared by dynamic casting of floating film and transferring method (FTM) has been investigated. The film was first cast on liquid-substrate to obtain as a floating-film followed by its transfer on solid-substrate such as white-glass or Si-wafer in order to evaluate their optoelectronic characteristics. As a possible key-factor to generate the orientation of conjugated polymer in this method we focused on the components of liquid-substrate in this study. The orientation dependence upon various liquid-substrates reveals that dichroic ratio strongly changes with liquid-substrates. Pictures of floating-film show the change in size of floating-parts depending upon the liquid-substrate, representing the expansion length of casting solution upon the viscosity. These findings have indicated that spreading speed of polymer solution and solvent evaporation speed controls the size of floating-film leading to change in the orientation intensity. The multilayer coatings of oriented NR-P3HT films were used for polarized FTIR analysis exhibiting clear dichroism. The obtained dichroic characteristics were well corresponded with in-plane, out-of-plane and non-oriented vibronic modes of P3HT.

Interfacial sulfur functionalization anchoring SnO2 and CH3NH3PbI3 for enhanced stability and trap passivation in perovskite solar cells

Trap states at the interface or in bulk perovskite materials critically influence perovskite solar cells performance and long-term stability. Here, a strategy for efficiently passivating charge traps and mitigating interfacial recombination by SnO2 surface sulfur functionalization is reported, which utilizes xanthate decomposition on the SnO2 surface at low temperature. The results show that functionalized sulfur atoms can coordinate with under-coordinated Pb2+ ions near the interface. After device fabrication under more than 60 % humidity in ambient air, the efficiency of methylammonium lead iodide (MAPbI3 ) perovskite solar cells based on sulfur-functionalized SnO2 increased from 16.56 % to 18.41 % with suppressed hysteresis, which resulted from the accelerated interfacial charge transport kinetics and decreased traps in bulk perovskite by interfacial sulfur functionalization. Additionally, thermally stimulated current studies show the decreased trap density in the shallow trap area after interfacial sulfur functionalization. The interfacial sulfur functionalized solar cells without sealing also exhibited considerable retardation of solar cell degradation with only 10 % degradation after 70 days air storage. This work demonstrates a facile sulfur functionalization strategy by using xanthate decomposition on SnO2 surfaces to obtain highly efficient perovskite solar cells.

Anisotropic charge transport in highly oriented films of semiconducting polymer prepared by ribbon-shaped floating film

Fabrication of large area and uniform thin films with preferred edge-on orientation is highly demanded for flexible organic electronic devices. In this work, utilization of a newly designed slider in the floating film transfer method to assist unidirectional film spreading led to the fabrication of uniform and macroscopically edge-on oriented ribbon-shaped floating films (15 cm × 2 cm) having very large optical anisotropy (>20). The results pertaining to the in-plane grazing angle incident X-ray diffraction (GIXD) and φ-scan measurements revealed the well-stacked polymer backbone conformation with edge-on orientation without any inter-mixing of face-on oriented counterparts. Optical anisotropy dependent charge transport in organic field effect transistors using anisotropic poly(3,3‴-didodecyl-quaterthiophene) films has also been shown, and the results are supported by polarized electronic absorption and GIXD measurements.

Synthesis and Optoelectrical Characterization of Novel Squaraine Dyes Derived from Benzothiophene and Benzofuran

Synthesis and photophysical characterizations of two novel small molecules SQ-BEN-THI and SQ-BEN-FUR with D–A–D molecular structure consisting of squaraine as central unit and benzothiophene and benzofuran as end groups are being reported. Apart from very sharp and intense light absorption by these molecular sensitizers in near-infrared (NIR) wavelength region, their possibility as small molecular organic semiconductor was also explored after fabricating organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). Results obtained from photophysical, electrochemical, and quantum chemical studies were combined to elucidate the structural and optoelectronic properties. Electrical characterization pertaining to the charge-transport properties carried after OFET fabrication exhibited field-effect mobilities of 4.0 × 10–5 and 5.4 × 10–5 cm2/(V s) for SQ-BEN-THI and SQ-BEN-FUR, respectively. After thermal annealing at 130 °C, the field-effect mobility was found to increase for both squaraine dyes. Relatively facile carrier transport in SQ-BEN-FUR compared to that of SQ-BEN-THI could be attributed to relatively higher backbone planarity as indicated from optimized molecular structure obtained after density functional theory calculations. This work may guide for further molecular design and synthesis of novel squaraine dyes for high-performance OFET applications.

Casting Control of Floating-films into Ribbon-shape Structure by modified Dynamic FTM

We have developed a new method to obtain Ribbon-shaped floating films via dynamic casting of floating-film and transfer method (dynamic-FTM). Dynamic-FTM is a unique method to prepare oriented thin-film of conjugated polymers (CPs) which is quick and easy. This method has several advantages as compared to the other conventional casting procedure to prepare oriented CP films. In the conventional dynamic FTM appearance of large scale circular orientation poses difficulty not only for practical applications but also hinders the detailed analysis of the orientation mechanism. In this present work, pros and cons of this newly proposed ribbon-shaped floating-film have been discussed in detail from those of the conventional floating-film prepared by dynamic-FTM.