By a comparison of infrared reflection-absorption (RA) and transmission intensities, a method for the quantitative evaluation of molecular orientation in thin Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) films has been developed. The enhancement factors for the RA to transmission absorption intensities of hypothetical isotropic films were theoretically calculated by using Hansen's optical formulas for thin multilayer films. By combination of these values with the experimentally determined intensity ratios of the RA to transmission spectra for uniaxially oriented LB films, the orientation angles of the transition moments of major infrared bands were evaluated. Application of this method to the 7-monolayer LB film of cadmium stearate deposited on Ag (for RA measurements) and on ZnSe (for transmission measurements) substrates gave reasonable tilt angles for the molecular chain as compared to those reported by other investigators and to the data from the X-ray analysis. This method will be discussed in detail and the various factors which influence the accuracy of the orientation analysis will also be covered.

We investigated a field-effect transistor (FET) based on a poly(3-n-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) to determine the influence of moisture on device characteristics and thus gain a deep understanding of the mechanism underlying the susceptibility to air of the operation of FETs of this kind. The fundamental output characteristics, which include effective field-effect modulation and saturation behavior in the output current, remained almost the same for every current–voltage profile in a vacuum, N2 and O2. By contrast, operation in N2 humidified with water resulted in enlarged off-state conduction and deterioration in the saturation behavior, in the same manner as that experienced with exposure to room air. We concluded that atmospheric water had a greater effect on the susceptibility of the device operation to air than O2, whose p-type doping activity as regards P3HT caused only a small increase in the conductivity of the active layer and a slight decrease in the field-effect mobility with exposure at ambient pressure. We discuss the mechanism of the significant distortion in the operation induced by moisture in terms of the difference between the influence of water and O2 on the device characteristics.

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A flexible thermoelectric generator (TEG) was fabricated on a polyethylene naphthalate film substrate using a printing process. The thermoelectric material used in this study, a composite material consisting of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and polystyrene, contained approximately 35 vol. % of voids. Because of the reduction in the density of the CNT–polystyrene composite caused by the voids, the TEG was remarkably lightweight (weight per unit area: ≈15.1 mg/cm2). The TEG generated approximately 55 mW/m2 of power at a temperature difference of 70 °C.

Rhamnolipid B and its precursor A, both microbial and membranous constituent, reversibly changed morphologies of their molecular aggregates from vesicles under acidic conditions, to lamella, lipid particles, and finally to micelles under weakly acidic conditions within a narrow pH range of about 5–7.