Pinning energies of organic semiconductors in high-efficiency organic solar cells

With the emergence of new materials for high-efficiency organic solar cells(OSCs),understanding and finetuning the interface energetics become increasingly important.Precise determination of the so-called pinning energies,one of the critical characteristics of the material to predict the energy level alignment(ELA)at either electrode/organic or organic/organic interfaces,are urgently needed for the new materials.Here,pinning energies of a wide variety of newly developed donors and nonfullerene acceptors(NFAs)are measured through ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy.The positive pinning energies of the studied donors and the negative pinning energies of NFAs are in the same energy range of 4.3−4.6 eV,which follows the design rules developed for fullerene-based OSCs.The ELA for metal/organic and inorganic/organic interfaces follows the predicted behavior for all of the materials studied.For organic-organic heterojunctions where both the donor and the NFA feature strong intramolecular charge transfer,the pinning energies often underestimate the experimentally obtained interface vacuum level shift,which has consequences for OSC device performance.

Detection of Breast Cancer 1 (BRCA1) Gene Using an Electrochemical DNA Biosensor Based on Immobilized ZnO Nanowires

Herein we report an electrochemical DNA biosensor for the rapid detection of sequence (5’ AAT GGA TTT ATC TGC TCT TCG 3’) specific for the breast cancer 1 (BRCA1) gene. The proposed electrochemical genosensor is based on short oligonucleotide DNA probe immobilized onto zinc oxide nanowires (ZnONWs) chemically synthesized onto gold electrode via hydrothermal technique. The morphology studies of the ZnONWs, performed by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), showed that the ZnO nanowires are uniform, highly dense and oriented perpendicularly to the substrate. Recognition event between the DNA probe and the target was investigated by differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) in 0.1 M acetate buffer solution (ABS), pH 7.00;as a result of the hybridization, an oxidation signal was observed at +0.8 V. The influences of pH, target concentration, and non-complimentary DNA on biosensor performance were examined. The proposed DNA biosensor has the ability to detect the target sequence in the range of concentration between 10.0 and 100.0 μM with a detection limit of 3.32 μM. The experimental results demonstrated that the prepared ZnONWs/Au electrodes are suitable platform for the immobilization of DNA.

Adaptive bands filter bank optimized by genetic algorithm for robust speech recognition system

Perceptual auditory filter banks such as Bark-scale filter bank are widely used as front-end processing in speech recognition systems.However,the problem of the design of optimized filter banks that provide higher accuracy in recognition tasks is still open.Owing to spectral analysis in feature extraction,an adaptive bands filter bank (ABFB) is presented.The design adopts flexible bandwidths and center frequencies for the frequency responses of the filters and utilizes genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize the design parameters.The optimization process is realized by combining the front-end filter bank with the back-end recognition network in the performance evaluation loop.The deployment of ABFB together with zero-crossing peak amplitude (ZCPA) feature as a front process for radial basis function (RBF) system shows significant improvement in robustness compared with the Bark-scale filter bank.In ABFB,several sub-bands are still more concentrated toward lower frequency but their exact locations are determined by the performance rather than the perceptual criteria.For the ease of optimization,only symmetrical bands are considered here,which still provide satisfactory results.

Towards electrochemical hydrogen storage in liquid organic hydrogen carriers via proton-coupled electron transfers

Green hydrogen is identified as one of the prime clean energy carriers due to its high energy density and a zero emission of CO_(2).A possible solution for the transport of H_(2)in a safe and low-cost way is in the form of liquid organic hydrogen carriers(LOHCs).As an alternative to loading LOHC with H_(2)via a two-step procedure involving preliminary electrolytic production of H_(2)and subsequent chemical hydrogenation of the LOHC,we explore here the possibility of electrochemical hydrogen storage(EHS)via conversion of proton of a proton donor into a hydrogen atom involved in covalent bonds with the LOHC(R)via a protoncoupled electron transfer(PCET)reaction:2nH^(+)+2ne^(-)+Rox■n H_(2)^(0)Rred.We chose 9-fluorenone/fluorenol(Fnone/Fnol)conversion as such a model PCET reaction.The electrochemical activation of Fnone via two sequential electron transfers was monitored with in-situ and operando spectroscopies in absence and in presence of different alcohols as proton donors of different reactivity,which enabled us to both quantify and get the mechanistic insight on PCET.The possibility of hydrogen extraction from the loaded carrier molecule was illustrated by chemical activation.

Hot-electron emission-driven energy recycling in transparent plasmonic electrode for organic solar cells

Plasmonic metal electrodes with subwavelength nanostructures are promising for enhancing light harvesting in photovoltaics.However,the nonradiative damping of surface plasmon polaritons(SPPs)during coupling with sunlight results in the conversion of the excited hot-electrons to heat,which limits the absorption of light and generation of photocurrent.Herein,an energy recycling strategy driven by hotelectron emission for recycling the SPP energy trapped in the plasmonic electrodes is proposed.A transparent silver-based plasmonic metal electrode(A-PME)with a periodic hexagonal nanopore array is constructed,which is combined with a luminescent organic emitter for radiative recombination of the injected hot-electrons.Owing to the suppressed SPP energy loss via broadband hot-electron emission,the A-PME achieves an optimized optical transmission with an average transmittance of over 80%from 380 to 1200 nm.Moreover,the indium-tin-oxide-free organic solar cells yield an enhanced light harvestingwith a power conversion efficiency of 16.1%.