Fluorobenzotriazole-Based Medium-Bandgap Conjugated D–A Copolymers for Applications to Fullerene-Based and Nonfullerene Polymer Solar Cells

Two new medium-bandgap (MBG) donor–acceptor (D–A) conjugated polymers (PSTF and PDTS) with fluorobenzotriazole as an A unit and spiro[cyclopenta[1,2-b:5,4-b′]dithiophene-4,9′-fluorene] (STF) or dithienosilole (DTS) as the D unit are designed and synthesized as donor materials for polymer solar cell (PSC) applications. PSTF shows a broader absorption spectrum relative to PDTS reflecting an additional high-energy absorption band due to the conjugated thiophene side chains on STF moiety. Compared with PDTS, PSTF exhibits weaker π–π aggregation and lower lying HOMO level. Photovoltaic properties of the PSCs reveal that either PSTF or PDTS using PC₆₁BM as acceptor exhibits better performances than that of ITIC as acceptor, which results from the simultaneously increased V_oc, J_sc, and FF of PC₆₁BM-based PSCs. Moreover, when combined with PC₆₁BM and ITIC, the PSTF-based PSCs exhibit an efficiency of 3.66% and 2.42%, respectively, which is 45% and almost 1.5 times higher than that of the PDTS-based PSCs, respectively. This can be ascribed to the obviously improved V_oc and FF of PSTF-based PSCs benefitted from the deeper HOMO level and better active layer morphology. Our work demonstrates that using spiro-annulated building block as donor unit to construct MBG D-A copolymers is an alternative and effective approach for achieving efficient donor materials in PSCs. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2018 , 56, 2330–2343     

Spatial luminescent properties and growth mechanism of one- and two-dimensional ZnO complexes

Unique ZnO nanocomplexes of one-dimensional nanorods combined with two-dimensional hexagonal plates are fabricated by a chemical vapor deposition method without using any catalysts. Cathodoluminescence images show that the green emission from the nanoplate is much stronger than that from the nanorod, which suggests the oxygen vacancies are more abundant in the ZnO nanoplates. Our study finds that the growth of one-dimensional ZnO nanorods and low-dimensional ZnO complexes can be switched by directly controlling the source oxygen.     

A conservative local discontinuous Galerkin method for the solution of nonlinear Schrdinger equation in two dimensions

In this study, we present a conservative local discontinuous Galerkin(LDG) method for numerically solving the two-dimensional nonlinear Schrdinger(NLS) equation. The NLS equation is rewritten as a firstorder system and then we construct the LDG formulation with appropriate numerical flux. The mass and energy conserving laws for the semi-discrete formulation can be proved based on different choices of numerical fluxes such as the central, alternative and upwind-based flux. We will propose two kinds of time discretization methods for the semi-discrete formulation. One is based on Crank-Nicolson method and can be proved to preserve the discrete mass and energy conservation. The other one is Krylov implicit integration factor(IIF) method which demands much less computational effort. Various numerical experiments are presented to demonstrate the conservation law of mass and energy, the optimal rates of convergence, and the blow-up phenomenon.     

Breaking a novel colour image encryption algorithm based on chaos

Recently, a colour image encryption algorithm based on chaos was proposed by cascading two position permutation operations and one substitution operation, which are all determined by some pseudo-random number sequences generated by iterating the logistic map. This paper evaluates the security level of this encryption algorithm and finds that the position permutation-only part and the substitution part can be separately broken with only ?(log₂(3MN))/8? and 2 chosen plain-images, respectively, where MN is the size of the plain-image. The effectiveness of the proposed chosen-plaintext attack is supported by concise theoretical analyses, and is verified by experimental results.     

The combination of QoS,aggregation and RTS/CTS in Very High Throughput IEEE 802.11ac networks

We consider a single WiFi cell in which multiple mobile stations transmit multiple QoS constrained Application flows to the Access Point. We investigate the efficiency of using RTS/CTS in the face of the QoS constraints, in various Access Categories that are defined in the WiFi standard, in a number of transmitting stations and in various amounts of aggregation. We show that using RTS/CTS is efficient in terms of Throughput, when there are collisions and the time to recover these collisions is within the Delay/Loss constraints of the Application flows. It turns out that RTS/CTS is most efficient in the Video and Voice Access Categories and Delay constrains in the order of several tens of milli-seconds. For smaller Delay constraints it is more efficient without RTS/CTS. Thus, we show the existence of cross-points: In Delay constraints smaller than the cross points it is more efficient without RTS/CTS and beyond the cross-points the opposite is true.     

Superconvergence of mixed finite element approximations to 3-D Maxwell’s equations in metamaterials

Numerical simulation of metamaterials has attracted more and more attention since 2000, after the first metamaterial with negative refraction index was successfully constructed. In this paper we construct a fully-discrete leap-frog type finite element scheme to solve the three-dimensional time-dependent Maxwell’s equations when metamaterials are involved. First, we obtain some superclose results between the interpolations of the analytical solutions and finite element solutions obtained using arbitrary orders of Raviart–Thomas–Nédélec mixed spaces on regular cubic meshes. Then we prove the superconvergence result in the discrete l₂ norm achieved for the lowest-order Raviart–Thomas–Nédélec space. To our best knowledge, such superconvergence results have never been obtained elsewhere. Finally, we implement the leap-frog scheme and present numerical results justifying our theoretical analysis.     

A decoupling two-grid method for the time-dependent Poisson-Nernst-Planck equations

Numerical Algorithms - We study a two-grid strategy for decoupling the time-dependent Poisson-Nernst-Planck equations describing the mass concentration of ions and the electrostatic potential. The...     

High-efficiency blue OLEDs based on dendritic dinuclear iridium (III) complexes grafted with fluorene core and blue fluorescence chromospheres

Two novel dendrimer-like blue-emitting dinuclear cyclometalated iridium (III) complexes, namely (DNaTPA)₂DBF(FIrpic)₂ and (DPyTPA)₂DBF(FIrpic)₂, have been successfully synthesized and characterized. In which FIrpic is an iridium (III) bis[(4,6-difluorophenyl)pyridinato-N,C2′]picolate blue-emitting phosphorescent chromophore core, DBF is a 2,7-diphenyl-9H-fluorene bridging core, DNaTPA and DPyTPA are deep blue-emitting fluorescent chromophores composed by rigid high-triplet-energy dendrons of triphenylamine-functionalized naphthalene or pyrene units, and the peripheral dendrons are connected with the ancillary ligand of the emitting core through nonconjugated ether linkage. Their photophysical, thermal, electrochemical, as well as electrophosphorescent properties were primarily studied. Both iridium (III) complexes exhibit high efficient blue emission in solution (38.5% and 19.2%) and a typical FIrpic emission in 1,3-bis(N-carbzolyl)benzene (mCP) matrix (27.0% and 24.1%). Simple bilayer phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (PHOLEDs) with a configuration of ITO/PEDOT:PSS/mCP:dopants/TmPyPB/Liq/Al achieved high efficiencies of 12.96 cd/A for current efficiency (CE), 6162 cd/m² for brightness, 6.22% for external quantum efficiency (EQE), and 3.13 lm/W for power efficiency (PE) with Commission International de L'Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.19 ± 0.01, 0.35 ± 0.02) at only 2 wt% blend of (DNaTPA)₂DBF(FIrpic)₂. (DPyTPA)₂DBF(FIrpic)₂-doped devices also reach efficiencies of (9.14 cd/A, 7167 cd/m², 4.41%, 2.61 lm/W) at the same doping concentration. The results demonstrate that the introduction of dendritic blue-emitting fluorescent chromophore grafted into the blue phosphorescent chromosphere core through nonconjugated linkage is an efficient way to achieve high-efficiency sky-blue emission.     

Hydrothermal exfoliated molybdenum disulfidenanosheets as anode material for lithium ion batteries

Ultrathin MoS2nanosheets were prepared in high yield using a facile and effective hydrothermal intercalation and exfoliation route. The products were characterized in detail using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The results show that the high yield of MoS2nanosheets with good quality was successfully achieved and the dimensions of the immense nanosheets reached 1 μm–2 μm. As anode material for Li-ion batteries, the as-prepared MoS2nanosheets electrodes exhibited a good initial capacity of 1190 mAh g-1and excellent cyclic stability at constant current density of 50 mA g-1. After 50 cycles, it still delivered reversibly sustained high capacities of 750 mAh g-1.