With the demonstration of small-area, single-junction polymer solar cells (PSCs) with power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) over the 10% performance milestone, the manufacturing of high-performance large-area PSC modules is becoming the most critical issue for commercial applications. However, materials and processes that are optimized for fabricating small-area devices may not be applicable for the production of high-performance large-area PSC modules. One of the challenges is to develop new conductive interfacial materials that can be easily processed with a wide range of thicknesses without significantly affecting the performance of the PSCs. Toward this goal, we report two novel naphthalene diimide-based, self-doped, n-type water/alcohol-soluble conjugated polymers (WSCPs) that can be processed with a broad thickness range of 5 to 100 nm as efficient electron transporting layers (ETLs) for high-performance PSCs. Space charge limited current and electron spin resonance spectroscopy studies confirm that the presence of amine or ammonium bromide groups on the side chains of the WSCP can n-dope PC71BM at the bulk heterojunction (BHJ)/ETL interface, which improves the electron extraction properties at the cathode. In addition, both amino functional groups can induce self-doping to the WSCPs, although by different doping mechanisms, which leads to highly conductive ETLs with reduced ohmic loss for electron transport and extraction. Ultimately, PSCs based on the self-doped WSCP ETLs exhibit significantly improved device performance, yielding PCEs as high as 9.7% and 10.11% for PTB7-Th/PC71BM and PffBT4T-2OD/PC71BM systems, respectively. More importantly, with PffBT4T-2OD/PC71BM BHJ as an active layer, a prominent PCE of over 8% was achieved even when a thick ETL of 100 nm was used. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest efficiency demonstrated for PSCs with a thick interlayer and light-harvesting layer, which are important criteria for eventually making organic photovoltaic modules based on roll-to-roll coating processes.

We report the application of a perylene bisimide (PBI-H) as zinc oxide (ZnO) surface modifier to afford an organic-inorganic co-interlayer for highly efficient inverted organic photovoltaics (i-OPV). By thermal annealing, a N-Zn chemical bond formed between PBI-H and ZnO, inducing close organic-inorganic combination. In addition, this co-interlayer shows decreased work function and increased electron transportation and conductivity, which are benefits for the cathode to enhance charge extraction efficiency and decrease recombination losses. As a result a highly efficient i-OPV was achieved with a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 9.43% based on this co-interlayer with PTB7:PC71BM as the active layer, which shows over 35% enhancement compared to that of the device without the PBI-H layer. Moreover, this co-interlayer was widely applicable for i-OPVs based on various material systems, such as P3HT:PC61BM and PTB7-Th:PC71BM, resulting in PCE as high as 4.78% and 10.31%, respectively.

Visible-near infrared photodetectors are reported with excellent overall device parameters from conjugated polymers with different optical bandgaps by optimal design in device structure and optimizing the thickness of the photoactive layer in nanoscale. The best visible-near infrared photodetectors show high detectivity (D*) of 1.7 × 10(13) Jones at a wavelength of 710 nm, which is among one of the best results of polymer photodetectors reported to date.

Herein is described a blue-emitting gold(III)-TADF complex Au-1 that could act as a sensitizer for a solution-processed organic light-emitting diode (SP-OLED), in which a multi-resonance TADF emitter ν-DABNA is employed...

Carbene−Au−amide (CMA) type complexes, in which the amide and carbene ligands act as an electron donor (D) and acceptor (A), respectively, can exhibit strong delayed fluorescence (DF) from a ligand to ligand charge transfer (LLCT) excited state. Although the coplanar donor−acceptor (D-A) conformation has been suggested to be a crucial factor favoring radiative decay of the charge-transfer excited state, the geometric structural factor underpinning the excited-state mechanism of CMA complexes remains an open question. We herein develop a new class of carbene−Au−carbazolate complexes by introducing large aromatic substituents onto the carbazolate ligand, the presence of which are conceived to restrict the rotation of the Au−N bond and thus confine a twisted D-A conformation in both ground and excited states. A highly twisted D-A orientation is found for the complexes in their crystal structures. Photophysical studies reveal that the twisted conformation induces a decrease in the gap (ΔE ST ) between the lowest singlet excited state (S 1 ) and the triplet manifold (T 1 ) and thus a faster reverse intersystem crossing (RISC) from T 1 to S 1 at the expense of oscillator strength for an S 1 radiative transition. In comparison with the coplanar analogue, the twisted complexes exhibit comparable or improved DF with quantum yields of up to 94% and short emission lifetimes down to sub-microseconds. The tuning of excited-state dynamics has been well interpreted by density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TDDFT) calculations, which unveil much faster RISC rates for twisted complexes. Solution-processed organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) based on the new CMA complexes show promising performances with almost negligible efficiency rolloff at a brightness of 1000 cd m −2 . This work implies that neither a coplanar ground-state D-A conformation nor a dynamic rotation of the M−N bond is the key to the realization of efficient DF for CMA complexes.

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Tyramine has been paid more attention in recent years as a significant metabolite of tyrosine and catecholamine drug and an intermediate of medicinal material and some drugs. In this study, an effective, green, and three-step biocatalytic synthesis method for production of tyramine starting from serine in keratin acid hydrolysis wastewater was developed and investigated. Serine deaminase from Escherichia coli was first combined with tyrosine phenol-lyase from Citrobacter koseri, to convert L-serine to L-tyrosine. L-Tyrosine can then be decarboxylated to tyramine by tyrosinede carboxylase from Lactobacillus brevis. All these enzymes originated from recombinant whole cells. Serine deaminaseand tyrosine phenol-lyase could efficiently convert L-serine in wastewater to L-tyrosine at pH 8.0, 37 °C, and Triton X-100 of 0.04% when tyrosine phenol-lyase and its corresponding substrates were sequentially added. Tyrosine conversion rate reached 98 % by L-tyrosine decarboxylase. In scale-up study, the conversion yield of L-serine in wastewater to tyrosine was up to 89 %. L-Tyrosine was decarboxylated to tyramine with a high yield 94 %. Tyramine hydrochloride was obtained with a total yield 84 %. This study has provided an efficient way of recycling keratin acid hydrolysis wastewater to produce tyramine.