Realizing fast photoinduced recovery with polyfluorene-block-poly(vinylphenyl oxadiazole) block copolymers as electret in photonic transistor memory devices

Photonic field-effect transistor (FET) memory devices offer unique advantages owing to their solution processability, low cost production, and their lightweight and structural flexibility. Despite the plethora of research demonstrated the photon based programming process, limited reports are available for photoinduced recovery mechanism in such devices. To investigate the influence of polymer electret design on photonic memory performance, poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) (PFO)–block–poly (vinylphenyl oxadiazole) (POXD) conjugated block copolymers were employed to a photonic FET memory with n-type semiconducting channel. The studied device exhibited bistable ON/OFF current states after electrical programming and photoinduced recovery (erasing) processes. The device operating mechanism was elaborated by comparing the device performance with respective electrets of PFO-b-POXD and PFO-b-polystyrene (PS) and PFO homopolymer. We found that PFO-b-POXD can efficiently generate photoexciton under UV illumination to neutralize the trapped hole, and assuage the hole trapping propensity of PFO segment, simultaneously. By optimizing the POXD content in the block copolymer, a decent memory ratio (I_ON/I_OFF) of ~10⁵ was achieved after 10⁴ s, indicating its superior long-term stability and data discernibility. This research shows the judicious strategy to design polymer electret for photonic memory, and it opens up the possibility of developing photonic memory, human perception and futuristic communication systems using simple, convenient and reliable optoelectronic technique.     

Spin transport in epitaxial Fe3O4/GaAs lateral structured devices

Research in the spintronics community has been intensively stimulated by the proposal of the spin field-effect transistor (SFET), which has the potential for combining the data storage and process in a single device. Here we report the spin dependent transport on a Fe₃O₄/GaAs based lateral structured device. Parallel and antiparallel states of two Fe₃O₄ electrodes are achieved. A clear MR loop shows the perfect butterfly shape at room temperature, of which the intensity decreases with the reducing current, showing the strong bias dependence. Understanding the spin-dependent transport properties in this architecture has strong implication in further development of the spintronic devices for room-temperature SFETs.     

Transition Metal Dichalcogenides for Sensing and Oncotherapy: Status,Challenges, and Perspective

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are increasingly being used for chemical sensing, biosensing, and tumor therapy on account of their diversity, biocompatibility, multifunctionality, adjustable bandgap, and excellent photoelectric characteristics. This review mainly discusses the effect of the elemental composition and structure of TMDCs on the performance of electrochemical, biofluorescence, and colorimetric biosensors. The applications of TMDCs in tumor therapies are reviewed here. Furthermore, the current challenges and future directions for developing TMDC-based theranostics are summarized.     

Spin-orbit torques induced by spin Hall and spin swapping currents of a separate ferromagnet in a magnetic trilayer

Spin-orbit torques (SOTs) have been investigated most widely in normal metal/ferromagnet bilayers where the spin Hall effect of normal metal is a main source of spin currents. Recently, ferromagnets are found to also serve as spin-current sources through spin-orbit coupling. In this work, we theoretically investigate SOT acting on ferromagnet₂ in ferromagnet₁/normal metal/ferromagnet₂ trilayers, which is caused by the spin Hall and spin swapping effects of ferromagnet₁. Our result provides an analytical expression of SOT in the trilayers, which may be useful for quantifying the spin Hall and spin swapping effects of ferromagnets and also for designing and interpreting SOT experiments where a ferromagnet is used as a spin-current source instead of a normal metal.     

Laser-induced forward transfer of polythiophene-based derivatives for fully polymeric thin film transistors

Polymeric thin-film transistors (pTFTs) have been fabricated by pulsed-laser printing of semiconductor and conductor polythiophene-based derivatives. Thin solid layers of semiconducting poly(3,3′″ didodecylquaterthiophene) (PQT-12) have been transferred by a laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) technique on Si/SiO₂ receiver substrates. Optimization of the transfer conditions and of the pixels morphologies has been realized. A marked improvement in the quality of the pixels has been observed, in terms of morphology and structure, by reducing the environmental pressure to 90 mbar during LIFT. Subsequently, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)/poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) has also been laser-printed and used as source/drain electrodes in the transistor configuration. Functional polymeric transistors have been obtained with high field-effect mobility up to 2 × 10⁻² cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ together with current modulation of 10⁴.     

Low-voltage operation of organic thin-film transistors based on ultrafine printed silver electrodes

We report the low-voltage operation of organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) based on high-resolution printed source/drain electrodes that are produced by a surface photoreactive nanometal printing (SuPR-NaP) technique. We utilized an ultrathin layer of perfluoropolymer, Cytop, that functions not only as a gate dielectric layer in the OTFTs but also as a base layer for producing a patterned reactive surface for silver nanoparticle chemisorption in the SuPR-NaP technique. We successfully demonstrate 2 V operation with negligible hysteresis in the polycrystalline pentacene OTFT with a gate dielectric thickness of 22 nm, and we achieved current amplification by the printed electrodes modified with pentafluorobenzenethiol. The SuPR-NaP technique enables the production of high-resolution printed silver electrodes required for high-performance OTFTs, which have potential practical electronic device applications.     

Two-dimensional analytical model of double-gate tunnel FETs with interface trapped charges including effects of channel mobile charge carriers

A two-dimensional analytical model of double-gate(DG) tunneling field-effect transistors(TFETs) with interface trapped charges is proposed in this paper. The influence of the channel mobile charges on the potential profile is also taken into account in order to improve the accuracy of the models. On the basis of potential profile, the electric field is derived and the expression for the drain current is obtained by integrating the BTBT generation rate. The model can be used to study the impact of interface trapped charges on the surface potential, the shortest tunneling length, the drain current and the threshold voltage for varying interface trapped charge densities, length of damaged region as well as the structural parameters of the DG TFET and can also be utilized to design the charge trapped memory devices based on TFET. The biggest advantage of this model is that it is more accurate, and in its expression there are no fitting parameters with small calculating amount. Very good agreements for both the potential, drain current and threshold voltage are observed between the model calculations and the simulated results.     

Hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene and diketopyrrolopyrrole based D-A conjugated copolymers for organic field effect transistor and polymer solar cells

Hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene (HBC) is a disc-shaped conjugated molecule with strong π-π stacking property, high intrinsic charge mobility and good self-assembly property. But for a long time, the organic photovoltaic (OPV) solar cells based on HBC small organic molecules demonstrated low power conversion efficiencies (PCEs). In this study, a series of polymers named as PHBCDPPC20, PHBCDPPC8, PHBCDPPF and PHBCDPPDT were designed and synthesized through copolymerization of HBC with bulky mesityl substituents and strong electron-withdrawing diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) with different alkyl side chains and various π-bridges. Introduction of DPP unit into the HBC derivatives broadened the absorption spectra and lowered the band gaps. Bulky mesityl substituents attached to periphery of HBC prevented polymers from self-aggregating into too large domain size in the blend films of photovoltaic devices. The different π-bridges have significant effect on the structure conformation of the polymers. The polymer PHBCDPPDT with bithiophene π-bridges demonstrated the broadest absorption for its extensive π-conjugation and more coplanar conformation compared with the thiophene π-bridge one. PHBCDPPC20, PHBCDPPC8, PHBCDPPF and PHBCDPPDT gave field-effect hole mobilities of 1.35 × 10⁻³, 2.31 × 10⁻⁴, 2.79 × 10⁻⁴ and 8.60 × 10⁻³ cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, respectively. The solar cells based on these polymers displayed PCEs of 2.12%, 2.85%, 1.89% and 2.74%. To our knowledge, 2.85% is the highest PCE for the HBC-based photovoltaic materials till now.