10 research outputs found
Pattern formation aspects of electrically charged tri-stable media with implications to bulk heterojunction in organic photovoltaics
A common thread in designing electrochemically-based renewable energy devices
comprises materials that exploit nano-scale morphologies, e.g.,
supercapacitors, batteries, fuel cells, and bulk heterojunction organic
photovoltaics. In these devices, however, Coulomb forces often influence the
fine nano-details of the morphological structure of active layers leading to a
notorious decrease in performance. By focusing on bulk heterojunction organic
photovoltaics as a case model, a self-consistent mean-field framework that
combines binary (bi-stable) and ternary (tri-stable) morphologies with
electrokinetics is presented and analyzed, i.e., undertaking the coupling
between the spatiotemporal evolution of the material and charge dynamics along
with charge transfer at the device electrodes. Particularly, it is shown that
tri-stable composition may stabilize stripe morphology that is ideal bulk
heterojuction. Moreover, since the results rely on generic principles they are
expected to be applicable to a broad range of electrically charged
amphiphilic-type mixtures, such as emulsions, polyelectrolytes, and ionic
liquids.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
What is damaging the kidney in lupus nephritis?
Despite marked improvements in the survival of patients with severe lupus nephritis over the past 50 years, the rate of complete clinical remission after immune suppression therapy i