Electrolytes for quasi solid‐state dye‐sensitized solar cells based on block copolymers

The first use of PS_n‐b‐PEO_m‐b‐PS_n block copolymers (PS = polystyrene, PEO = poly(ethylene oxide)) as solid hosts for iodine/iodide electrolytes in dye‐sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) is described. Using the benchmark photosensitizer N719, DSSC based on the quasi solid‐state electrolytes afforded efficiencies up to 6.7%, to be compared with an efficiency of 7.3% obtained in similar conditions with a conventional iodine/iodide liquid electrolyte. By varying the PS:PEO relative volume ratio in the block copolymers different properties and morphologies were obtained. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2014 , 52, 719–727     

Non-existence of extremals for the Adimurthi–Druet inequality

The Adimurthi–Druet [1] inequality is an improvement of the standard Moser–Trudinger inequality by adding a $L^2$-type perturbation, quantified by $\alpha \in [0,{\lambda }_1)$, where ${\lambda }_1$ is the first Dirichlet eigenvalue of Δ on a smooth bounded domain. It is known [3], [10], [14], [19] that this inequality admits extremal functions, when the perturbation parameter α is small. By contrast, we prove here that the Adimurthi–Druet inequality does not admit any extremal, when the perturbation parameter α approaches ${\lambda }_1$. Our result is based on sharp expansions of the Dirichlet energy for blowing sequences of solutions of the corresponding Euler–Lagrange equation, which take into account the fact that the problem becomes singular as $\alpha \to {\lambda }_1$.     

Screening of Three Transition Metal‐Mediated Reactions Compatible with DNA‐Encoded Chemical Libraries

The construction of DNA‐encoded chemical libraries (DECLs) crucially relies on the availability of chemical reactions, which are DNA‐compatible and which exhibit high conversion rates for a large number of diverse substrates. In this work, we present our optimization and validation procedures for three copper and palladium‐catalyzed reactions (Suzuki cross‐coupling, Sonogashira cross‐coupling, and copper(I)‐catalyzed alkyne‐azide cycloaddition (CuAAC)), which have been successfully used by our group for the construction of large encoded libraries.