Three novel carbazole-based molecules have been synthesized and successfully applied as hole-transporting materials (HTMs) of CH3NH3PbI3-based perovskite solar cells. In particular, the perovskite cell with SGT-405, having a three-arm-type structure, exhibited a remarkable photovoltaic conversion efficiency (PCE) of 14.79%.

Novel carbazole-based hole-transporting materials (HTMs), including extended π-conjugated central core units such as 1,4-phenyl, 4,4'-biphenyl, or 1,3,5-trisphenylbenzene for promoting effective π-π stacking as well as the hexyloxy flexible group for enhancing solubility in organic solvent, have been synthesized as HTM of perovskite-sensitized solar cells. A HTM with 1,3,5-trisphenylbenzene core, coded as SGT-411, exhibited the highest charge conductivity caused by its intrinsic property to form crystallized structure. The perovskite-sensitized solar cells with SGT-411 exhibited the highest PCE of 13.00%, which is 94% of that of the device derived from spiro-OMeTAD (13.76%). Time-resolved photoluminescence spectra indicate that SGT-411 shows the shortest decay time constant, which is in agreement with the trends of conductivity data, indicating it having fastest charge regeneration. In this regard, a carbazole-based HTM with star-shaped chemical structure is considered to be a promising candidate HTM.

This paper reports a real-time study of the codynamical changes in the release of endogenous nitric oxide (NO) and oxygen (O(2)) consumption in a rat neocortex in vivo upon electrical stimulation using an amperometric NO/O(2) dual microsensor. Electrical stimulation induced transient cerebral hypoxia due to the increased metabolic demands that were not met by the blood volume inside the stimulated cortical region. A NO/O(2) dual microsensor was successfully used to monitor the pair of real-time dynamic changes in the tissue NO and O(2) contents. At the onset of electrical stimulation, there was an immediate decrease in the cortical tissue O(2) followed by a subsequent increase in the cortical tissue NO content. The averages of the maximum normalized concentration changes induced by the stimulation were a 0.41 (±0.04)-fold decrease in the O(2) and a 3.6 (±0.9)-fold increase in the NO concentrations when compared with the corresponding normalized basal levels. The peak increase in NO was always preceded by the peak decrease in O(2) in all animals (n = 11). The delay between the maximum decrease in O(2) and the maximum increase in NO varied from 3.1 to 54.8 s. This rather wide variation in the temporal associations was presumably attributed to the sparse distribution of NOS-containing neurons and the individual animal's differences in brain vasculatures, which suggests that a sensor with fine spatial resolution is needed to measure the location-specific real-time NO and O(2) contents. In summary, the developed NO/O(2) dual microsensor is effective for measuring the NO and O(2) contents in vivo. This study provides direct support for the dynamic role of NO in regulating the cerebral hemodynamics, particularly related to the tissue oxygenation.

We report that poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) derived from poly(ionic liquid) (PEDOT:PIL) constitutes a unique polymeric hole-injecting material capable of improving device lifetime in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Imidazolium-based poly(ionic liquid)s were engineered to impart non-acidic and non-aqueous properties to PEDOT without compromising any other properties of PEDOT. A fluorescent OLED was fabricated using PEDOT:PIL as a hole-injection layer and subjected to a performance evaluation test. In comparison with a control device using a conventional PEDOT-based material, the device with PEDOT:PIL was found to achieve a significant improvement in terms of device lifetime. This improvement was attributed to a lower indium content in the PEDOT:PIL layer, which can be also interpreted as the effective protection characteristics of PEDOT:PIL for indium extraction from the electrodes.

This study reports real-time, in vivo functional measurement of nitric oxide (NO) and carbon monoxide (CO), two gaseous mediators in controlling cerebral blood flow. A dual electrochemical NO/CO microsensor enables us to probe the complex relationship between NO and CO in regulating cerebrovascular tone. Utilizing this dual sensor, we monitor in vivo change of NO and CO simultaneously during direct epidural electrical stimulation of a living rat brain cortex. Both NO and CO respond quickly to meet physiological needs. The neural system instantaneously increases the released amounts of NO and CO to compensate the abrupt, yet transient hypoxia that results from epidural electrical stimulation. Intrinsic-signal optical imaging confirms that direct electrical stimulation elicits robust, dynamic changes in cerebral blood flow, which must accompany NO and CO signaling. The addition of l-arginine (a substrate for NO synthase, NOS) results in increased NO generation and decreased CO production compared to control stimulation. On the other hand, application of the NOS inhibitor, l-N(G)-nitroarginine methyl ester (l-NAME), results in decreased NO release but increased CO production of greater magnitude. This observation suggests that the interaction between NO and CO release is likely not linear and yet, they are tightly linked vasodilators.

Although LCDs are widely used in power‐consumption critical applications, they are not very energy‐efficient. The largest absorber of light is the color filter. We developed a TFT‐LCD with four‐color subpixels: red, green, blue and white. The addition of the white subpixel greatly enhanced the light efficiency: up by 50%. The RGB‐to‐RGBW mapping algorithm was designed so that the hue and saturation remains unchanged from the original color. The result is a very bright display with color characteristic almost identical to RGB LCDs.

Color subpixel rendering is enhanced by co-optimizing the color subpixel architecture and algorithms with respect to human vision, resulting in the PenTile Matrix™ subpixel architecture to double the addressability and the MTF limit in both horizontal and vertical axes while reducing driver count. Results of prototype AMLCD panels demonstrate improved text and full color image quality.

The effects of plasma damages on the organic gate dielectric of the organic thin film transistor (OTFT) during the fabrication process are investigated; metal deposition process on the organic gate insulator by the plasma sputtering mainly generates the process induced damage of bottom contact structured OTFT. For this study, two different deposition methods (thermal evaporation and plasma sputtering) have been tested for their damage effects onto poly(4-vinyl phenol) (PVP) as organic gate dielectric. Unlike thermal evaporation, conventional plasma sputtering process induces serious damages onto the organic layer as increasing the surface energy, changing the surface morphology and degrading OTFT performances.