Packiyaraj Perumal

Preparation of metal halide perovskite solar cells through a liquid droplet assisted method

Solution-processed organometal trihalide-based perovskites have attracted attention in the field of solar energy due to their high absorption and low temperature fabrication. We demonstrated the droplet-assisted two-step process of spin coating lead iodide (PbI2) followed by spray coating methylammonium iodide (CH3NH3I) to prepare a continuous lead iodide perovskite film. A simple airbrush gun was used to control the volume of CH3NH3I, in order to attain a uniform, stoichiometric and continuous perovskite film. An insufficient or excess volume of CH3NH3I gives poor crystallinity and morphology, which gradually reduces the device performance. A power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 11.66% was achieved for 100 nm of PbI2 followed by 300 μl of CH3NH3I and annealing at 100 °C for 120 min. To address the reproducibility of the device performance, 50 devices were fabricated for statistical analysis and 80% of the devices showed the average PCE of 10–11% with reproducible JSC, VOC and FF.

Electrically Driven White Light Emission from Intrinsic Metal–Organic Framework

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have drawn tremendous potential as a replacement of traditional lighting due to its low-power consumption and longer lifetime. Nowadays, the practical white LEDs (WLED) are contingent on the photon down-conversion of phosphors containing rare-earth elements, which limits its utility, energy, and cost efficiency. In order to resolve the energy crisis and to address the environmental concerns, designing a direct WLED is highly desirable and remains a challenging issue. To circumvent the existing difficulties, in this report, we have designed and demonstrated a direct WLED consisting of a strontium-based metal-organic framework (MOF), {[Sr(ntca)(H2O)2]·H2O}n (1), graphene, and inorganic semiconductors, which can generate a bright white light emission. In addition to the suitable design of a MOF structure, the demonstration of electrically driven white light emission based on a MOF is made possible by the combination of several factors including the unique properties of graphene and the appropriate band alignment between the MOF and semiconductor layer. Because electroluminescence using a MOF as an active material is very rare and intriguing and a direct WLED is also not commonly seen, our work here therefore represents a major discovery which should be very useful and timely for the development of solid-state lighting.

Stretchable Random Lasers with Tunable Coherent Loops.

Stretchability represents a key feature for the emerging world of realistic applications in areas, including wearable gadgets, health monitors, and robotic skins. Many optical and electronic technologies that can respond to large strain deformations have been developed. Laser plays a very important role in our daily life since it was discovered, which is highly desirable for the development of stretchable devices. Herein, stretchable random lasers with tunable coherent loops are designed, fabricated, and demonstrated. To illustrate our working principle, the stretchable random laser is made possible by transferring unique ZnO nanobrushes on top of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer substrate. Apart from the traditional gain material of ZnO nanorods, ZnO nanobrushes were used as optical gain materials so they can serve as scattering centers and provide the Fabry-Perot cavity to enhance laser action. The stretchable PDMS substrate gives the degree of freedom to mechanically tune the coherent loops of the random laser action by changing the density of ZnO nanobrushes. It is found that the number of laser modes increases with increasing external strain applied on the PDMS substrate due to the enhanced possibility for the formation of coherent loops. The device can be stretched by up to 30% strain and subjected to more than 100 cycles without loss in laser action. The result shows a major advance for the further development of man-made smart stretchable devices.

Efficient molecular solar cells processed from green solvent mixtures

Cyclopentyl methyl ether (CPME), a green solvent, can be used to replace toxic halogenated solvents in the production of efficient molecular solar cells. With CPME alone as the processing solvent, a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 3.13% was achieved when using a two-dimensional conjugated small molecule (SMPV1) as the donor and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PC61BM) as the acceptor to form the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic photovoltaic (OPV) device. This low PCE arose from the low solubility of PC61BM in this green solvent. Accordingly, toluene (Tol) was introduced in various amounts as a co-solvent for CPME. The greater solubility of PC61BM in these mixtures led to significant improvements in the short-circuit current density (Jsc) and fill factor (FF) of the device, achieving a PCE of 7% after processing in the optimized green solvent mixture of CPME : Tol (60 : 40). Furthermore, thermal annealing (TA), at 80 °C for 10 min, of the active layers processed from the 60 : 40 green solvent mixture enhanced the PCE to 8.10%—the highest ever reported for a molecular solar cell processed from a green solvent mixture. Large-area devices fabricated this way, having areas of 1 and 5.5 cm2, exhibited PCEs of 6.20 and 3.73%, respectively. The morphological changes that occurred when applying the co-solvent and TA played key roles in achieving such high PCEs for molecular solar cells processed from green solvent mixtures—a promising step toward the upscaling of OPVs.

A White Random Laser

Random laser with intrinsically uncomplicated fabrication processes, high spectral radiance, angle-free emission, and conformal onto freeform surfaces is in principle ideal for a variety of applications, ranging from lighting to identification systems. In this work, a white random laser (White-RL) with high-purity and high-stability is designed, fabricated, and demonstrated via the cost-effective materials (e.g., organic laser dyes) and simple methods (e.g., all-solution process and self-assembled structures). Notably, the wavelength, linewidth, and intensity of White-RL are nearly isotropic, nevertheless hard to be achieved in any conventional laser systems. Dynamically fine-tuning colour over a broad visible range is also feasible by on-chip integration of three free-standing monochromatic laser films with selective pumping scheme and appropriate colour balance. With these schematics, White-RL shows great potential and high application values in high-brightness illumination, full-field imaging, full-colour displays, visible-colour communications, and medical biosensing.

Diverse Functionalities of Vertically Stacked Graphene/Single layer n-MoS 2 /SiO 2 /p-GaN Heterostructures

Integrating different dimentional materials on vertically stacked p-n hetero-junctions have facinated a considerable scrunity and can open up excellent feasibility with various functionalities in opto-electronic devices. Here, we demonstrate that vertically stacked p-GaN/SiO2/n-MoS2/Graphene heterostructures enable to exhibit prominent dual opto-electronic characteristics, including efficient photo-detection and light emission, which represents the emergence of a new class of devices. The photoresponsivity was found to achieve as high as ~10.4 AW−1 and the detectivity and external quantum efficiency were estimated to be 1.1 × 1010 Jones and ~30%, respectively. These values are superier than most reported hererojunction devices. In addition, this device exhibits as a self-powered photodetector, showing a high responsivity and fast response speed. Moreover, the device demonstrates the light emission with low turn-on voltage (~1.0 V) which can be realized by electron injection from graphene electrode and holes from GaN film into monolayer MoS2 layer. These results indicate that with a suitable choice of band alignment, the vertical stacking of materials with different dimentionalities could be significant potential for integration of highly efficient heterostructures and open up feasible pathways towards integrated nanoscale multi-functional optoelectronic devices for a variety of applications.

Highly stretchable label-like random laser on universal substrates

Stretchable label-like random laser can be easily transferred on any unconventional substrates, and function stably under 100% strain with many cycles. We believe our device can serve as advanced photonics modules.