Optoelectronic properties of anisotropic crystals vary with direction requiring that the orientation of molecular organic semiconductor crystals is controlled in optoelectronic device active layers to achieve optimal performance. Here, a generalizable strategy to introduce periodic variations in the out‐of‐plane orientations of 5,11‐bis(triisopropylsilylethynyl)anthradithiophene (TIPS ADT) crystals is presented. TIPS ADT crystallized from the melt in the presence of 16 wt.% polyethylene (PE) forms banded spherulites of crystalline fibrils that twist in concert about the radial growth direction. These spherulites exhibit band‐dependent light absorption, photoluminescence, and Raman scattering depending on the local orientation of crystals. Mueller matrix imaging reveals strong circular extinction (CE), with TIPS ADT banded spherulites exhibiting domains of positive or negative CE signal depending on the crystal twisting sense. Furthermore, orientation‐dependent enhancement in charge injection and extraction in films of twisted TIPS ADT crystals compared to films of straight crystals is visualized in local conductive atomic force microscopy maps. This enhancement leads to 3.3‐ and 6.2‐times larger photocurrents and external quantum efficiencies, respectively, in photodetectors comprising twisted crystals than those comprising straight crystals.
Dynamic light scattering (DLS) is a widely applied technique in multiple scientific and industrial fields for the size characterization of nanoscale objects in solution. While DLS is typically applied to characterize systems under static conditions, the emerging interest in using DLS on temporally evolving systems stimulates the latent need to improve the time resolution of measurements. Herein, we present a DLS microscopy setup (micro-DLS) that can accurately characterize the size of particles from autocorrelation functions built from sub-100 ms time windows, several orders of magnitude faster than previously reported. The system first registers the arrival time of the scattered photons using a time-correlated single photon counting module, which allows the construction of the autocorrelation function for size characterization based on a time window of freely chosen position and width. The setup could characterize both monomodal (60 or 220 nm polystyrene particles; PS) and multimodal size distributions (e.g., mixture of 20 nm LUDOX and 80 nm PS) with high accuracy in a sub-100 ms time window. Notably, the width of the size distribution became narrower as a shorter time window was used. This was attributed to the ability of the system to resolve the sub-ensemble of the broad size distribution, as the broad distribution could be reconstructed by accumulating the distribution obtained by consecutive 80 ms time windows. A DLS system with high temporal resolution will accelerate the expansion of its application toward systems that evolve as a function of time beyond its conventional use on static systems.
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