Experimental and theoretical study of the charge transport property of 4,4′-N,N′-dicarbazole-biphenyl

The hole and electron mobilities of the amorphous films of the organic semiconductor 4,4′-N,N′-dicarbazole-biphenyl (CBP) at different electric fields were measured through the time of flight (TOF) method. Based on its crystalline structure, the hole and electron mobilities of CBP were calculated. A detailed comparison between experimental and theoretical results is necessary for further understanding its charge transport properties. In order to do this, charge mobilities at zero electric field, μ(0), were deduced from experimental data as a link between experimental and theoretical data. It was found that the electron transport of CBP is less affected by traps compared with its hole transport. This unusual phenomenon can be understood through the distributions of frontier molecular orbitals. We showed that designing materials with frontier molecular orbitals localized at the center of the molecule has the potency to reduce the influence of traps on charge transport and provide new insights into designing high mobility charge transport materials.     

Regional stretch method to measure the elastic and hyperelastic properties of soft materials

Characterizing the mechanical properties of soft materials and biological tissues is of great significance for understanding their deformation behaviors. In this paper, a regional stretching method is proposed to measure the elastic and hyperelastic properties of a soft material with an adhesive surface or with the aid of glue. Theoretical and dimensional analyses are performed to investigate the regional stretch problem for soft materials that obey the neo-Hookean model, the Mooney-Rivlin model, or the Arruda-Boyce model. Finite element simulations are made to determine the expressions of the dimensionless functions that correlate the stretch response with the constitutive parameters. Thereby, an inverse approach is established to determine the elastic and hyperelastic properties of the tested materials. The regional stretch method is also compared to the indentation technique. Finally, experiments are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Imaging Array SPR Biosensor Immunoassays for Sulfamethoxazole and Sulfamethazine

A homemade array surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-based imaging biosensor was used to develop sensitive and fast immunoassays to determine sulfamethoxazole (SMOZ) and sulfamethazine (SMT) in buffer. Two conjugations of sulfonamide-bovine serum albumin (BSA) were separately immobilized on two different rows of the array chip with one row as reference. The immobilization was carried out in the instrument to monitor the quantity of the conjugations immobilized. The antibody mixed with the sulfonamide in the buffer was injected over the surface of the chip to get a relative response which was inversely proportional to the concentration of the sulfonamide in the PBS buffer. Two calibration curves were constructed and the limit of detection for sufamethoxazole in buffer was 3.5 ng/mL and for sulfamethazine 0.6 ng/mL. The stability and specificity of the antibody were also studied. The monoclonal antibody did not bind with BSA.