Hollywood or Sodom: A conversation about Charles Busch’s rich career

Entretien avec Charles Busch, acteur/écrivain/chanteur, connu pour ses comédies, son jeu drag et son penchant pour le glamour hollywoodien. L’entretien a eu lieu le 2 février 2023 à New York, au domicile de l’auteur.Interview with Charles Busch, actor/playwright/singer, well-known for his comedies, his drag acting and his penchant for 1940s Hollywood glamour. The interview took place on February 2nd 2023, at the author’s New York home

Sexual Distancing: Remembrance of Sex Past in Robert Chesley’s Jerker

Inspiré du parallèle, souvent dressé de nos jours, entre la pandémie de Covid-19 et le sida, cet essai propose une lecture de Jerker or the Helping Hand de Robert Chesley, pour explorer la « distanciation sexuelle » parmi les hommes homosexuels, tels que dépeints dans les pièces américaines du milieu des années 1980. Le paramètre qu’introduit le théâtre, au-delà de la distanciation sexuelle physique, est le déplacement du sexuel dans le passé. En effet, dans Jerker, les deux personnages recourent systématiquement à la mémoire pour alimenter leurs fantasmes masturbatoires mais aussi pour retracer, dans un processus de régression, le désir homosexuel jusqu’à sa forme la plus primitive. Dans la mesure où le sexe y est une activité qui se reporte exclusivement au passé, Jerker (1986) propose un nouveau paradigme que les pièces sur le sida suivront pendant plusieurs années.Inspired by recent analogies drawn between the Covid-19 pandemic and the early stages of the AIDS epidemic, this essay addresses the ways in which AIDS plays attest to a “sexual distancing”, in particular with reference to Robert Chesley’s Jerker or the Helping Hand. Even though other plays also explore exclusion and stigmatisation, Jerker tackles not only physical sexual distancing but also the displacement of the sexual into the past. Indeed, both characters in Jerker resort systematically to their memory not only to feed their masturbatory fantasies but also to recount, through a process of regression, their homosexual desire down to its most primitive form. Inasmuch as sex acts in it refer exclusively to the past, Jerker (1986) advances a new paradigm that AIDS plays would follow for several years

Fast Ultrahigh-Density Writing of Low Conductivity Patterns on Semiconducting Polymers

The exceptional interest in improving the limitations of data storage, molecular electronics, and optoelectronics has promoted the development of an ever increasing number of techniques used to pattern polymers at micro and nanoscale. Most of them rely on Atomic Force Microscopy to thermally or electrostatically induce mass transport, thereby creating topographic features. Here we show that the mechanical interaction of the tip of the Atomic Force Microscope with the surface of a class of conjugate polymers produces a local increase of molecular disorder, inducing a localized lowering of the semiconductor conductivity, not associated to detectable modifications in the surface topography. This phenomenon allows for the swift production of low conductivity patterns on the polymer surface at an unprecedented speed exceeding 20 $\mu m s^{-1}$; paths have a resolution in the order of the tip size (20 nm) and are detected by a Conducting-Atomic Force Microscopy tip in the conductivity maps.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, published in Nature Communications as Article (8 pages

Bilayer Interdiffused Heterojunction Organic Photodiodes Fabricated by Double Transfer Stamping

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136265/1/adom201600784-sup-0001-S1.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136265/2/adom201600784_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136265/3/adom201600784.pd

Improving the layer morphology of solution-processed perylene diimide organic solar cells with the use of a polymeric interlayer

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Photophysical Study of DPPTT-T/PC70BM Blends and Solar Devices as a Function of Fullerene Loading: An Insight into EQE Limitations of DPP-Based Polymers

Diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP)-based polymers have been consistently used for the fabrication of solar cell devices and transistors due to the existence of intermolecular short contacts, resulting in high electron and hole mobilities. However, they also often show limited external quantum efficiencies (EQEs). In this contribution, the authors analyze the limitations on EQE by a combined study of exciton dissociation efficiency, charge separation, and recombination kinetics in thin films and solar devices of a DPP-based donor polymer, DPPTT-T (thieno[3,2-b]thiophene-diketopyrrolopyrrole copolymer) blended with varying weight fractions of the fullerene acceptor PC70BM. From the correlations between photoluminescence quenching, transient absorption studies, and EQE measurements, it is concluded that the main limitation of photon-to-charge conversion in DPPTT-T/PC70BM devices is poor exciton dissociation. This exciton quenching limit is related not only to the low affinity/miscibility of the materials, as confirmed by wide angle X-ray diffraction diffraction and transmission electron microscopy data, but also to the relatively short DPPTT-T singlet exciton lifetime, possibly associated with high nonradiative losses. A further strategy to improve EQE in this class of polymers without sacrificing the good extraction properties in optimized blends is therefore to limit those nonradiative decay processes

Universal three-dimensional crosslinker for all-photopatterned electronics

All-solution processing of large-area organic electronics requires multiple steps of patterning and stacking of various device components. Here, we report the fabrication of highly integrated arrays of polymer thin-film transistors and logic gates entirely through a series of solution processes. The fabrication is done using a three-dimensional crosslinker in tetrahedral geometry containing four photocrosslinkable azide moieties, referred to as 4Bx. 4Bx can be mixed with a variety of solution-processable electronic materials (polymer semiconductors, polymer insulators, and metal nanoparticles) and generate crosslinked network under exposure to UV. Fully crosslinked network film can be formed even at an unprecedentedly small loading, which enables preserving the inherent electrical and structural characteristics of host material. Because the crosslinked electronic component layers are strongly resistant to chemical solvents, micropatterning the layers at high resolution as well as stacking the layers on top of each other by series of solution processing steps is possible

Use of SU8 as a stable and biocompatible adhesion layer for gold bioelectrodes.

Gold is the most widely used electrode material for bioelectronic applications due to its high electrical conductivity, good chemical stability and proven biocompatibility. However, it adheres only weakly to widely used substrate materials such as glass and silicon oxide, typically requiring the use of a thin layer of chromium between the substrate and the metal to achieve adequate adhesion. Unfortunately, this approach can reduce biocompatibility relative to pure gold films due to the risk of the underlying layer of chromium becoming exposed. Here we report on an alternative adhesion layer for gold and other metals formed from a thin layer of the negative-tone photoresist SU-8, which we find to be significantly less cytotoxic than chromium, being broadly comparable to bare glass in terms of its biocompatibility. Various treatment protocols for SU-8 were investigated, with a view to attaining high transparency and good mechanical and biochemical stability. Thermal annealing to induce partial cross-linking of the SU-8 film prior to gold deposition, with further annealing after deposition to complete cross-linking, was found to yield the best electrode properties. The optimized glass/SU8-Au electrodes were highly transparent, resilient to delamination, stable in biological culture medium, and exhibited similar biocompatibility to glass