Side Group of Poly(3-alkylthiophene)s Controlled Dispersion of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes for Transparent Conducting Film

Controlled dispersion of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in common solvents is a challenging issue, especially for the rising need of low cost flexible transparent conducting films (TCFs). Utilizing conductive polymer as surfactant to facilitate SWCNTs solubility is the most successful pragmatic approach to such problem. Here, we show that dispersion of SWCNT with polymer significantly relies on the length of polymer side groups, which not only influences the diameter distribution of SWCNTs in solution, also eventually affects their effective TCF performance. Surfactants with longer side groups covering larger nanotube surface area could induce adequate steric effect to stabilize the wrapped SWCNTs against the nonspecific aggregation, as discerned by the optical and microscopic measurements, also evidenced from the resultant higher electrokinetic potential. This approach demonstrates a facile route to fabricate large-area SWCNTs-TCFs exhibiting high transmittance and high conductivity, with considerable uniformity over 10 cm × 10 cm

High <i>K</i> Nanophase Zinc Oxide on Biomimetic Silicon Nanotip Array as Supercapacitors

A 3D trenched-structure metal–insulator–metal (MIM) nanocapacitor array with an ultrahigh equivalent planar capacitance (EPC) of ∼300 μF cm^–2 is demonstrated. Zinc oxide (ZnO) and aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃) bilayer dielectric is deposited on 1 μm high biomimetic silicon nanotip (SiNT) substrate using the atomic layer deposition method. The large EPC is achieved by utilizing the large surface area of the densely packed SiNT (∼5 × 10¹⁰ cm^–2) coated conformally with an ultrahigh dielectric constant of ZnO. The EPC value is 30 times higher than those previously reported in metal–insulator–metal or metal–insulator–semiconductor nanocapacitors using similar porosity dimensions of the support materials

The Effects of Fluorine-Contained Molecules on Improving the Polymer Solar Cell by Curing the Anomalous S‑Shaped <i>I</i>–<i>V</i> Curve

In this study, we investigate the effects of fluorinated poly­(3,4-ethylene dioxythiophene):poly­(styrenesulfonate) buffer layer on the performance of polymer photovoltaic cells. We demonstrate for the first time, the deterioration of the device performance can be effectively mended by modifying the interface between the active layer and buffer layer with heptadecafluoro-1,1,2,2-tetra-hydro-decyl trimethoxysilane (PFDS) and perfluorononane. Device performance shows a substantial enhancement of short-circuit current from 7.90 to 9.39 mA/cm² and fill factor from 27% to 53%. The overall device efficiency was improved from 0.98% to 3.12% for PFDS modified device. The mechanism of S-shape curing is also discussed. In addition, the stability of modified devices shows significant improvement than those without modification. The efficiency of the modified devices retains about half (1.88%) of its initial efficiency (4.1%) after 30 d compared to the unmodified ones (0.61%), under air atmosphere