Impact of Interface Layers on Luminescence Imaging of Organic Solar Cells: Discriminating ETL from HTL Defects.

Over the last two decades, organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices have seen their efficiency increase, while long-term stability and upscaling have been demonstrated for first-generation modules. Since the maturity level of this technology has now improved, techniques for rapid quality control have become relevant. Imaging techniques such as photo- and electroluminescence have already been used for this purpose.

Mechanical Reliability of Flexible Encapsulated Organic Solar Cells: Characterization and Improvement.

The encapsulation of organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices can help mitigate the degradation induced by environmental factors like water and oxygen and thus potential to increase OPV lifetime. Because flexibility is an important parameter for targeted OPV applications, this paper proposes a fundamental study on the impact of the roll-to-roll flexible encapsulation process. Both performance and mechanical reliability of encapsulated devices have been scouted.

Molecular engineering of a cobalt-based electrocatalytic nanomaterial for H₂ evolution under fully aqueous conditions.

The viability of a hydrogen economy depends on the design of efficient catalytic systems based on earth-abundant elements. Innovative breakthroughs for hydrogen evolution based on molecular tetraimine cobalt compounds have appeared in the past decade. Here we show that such a diimine-dioxime cobalt catalyst can be grafted to the surface of a carbon nanotube electrode.

Stabilization of well-organized transient micellar phases in CTAB-templated silica and organosilica thin films.

The influence of some previously reported critical parameters (aging of the silica sol, humidity, % of trivalent precursor) controlling the nature and the degree of organization of mesophases is studied in detail for CTAB-templated silica and organosilicate films prepared by rapid evaporation techniques. It is shown that all of these parameters directly influence the silica-condensation kinetics. Concerning films with the 2D-hexagonal structure belonging to the CTAB-water phase diagram, the mesophase is mainly stabilized by interactions between cylindrical micelles, and the reactivity of the silica sol does not drastically modify the extent of the order in films.