Optimizing the Ion Conductivity and Mechanical Stability of Polymer Electrolyte Membranes Designed for Use in Lithium Ion Batteries: Combining Imidazolium-Containing Poly(ionic liquids) and Poly(propylene carbonate).

State-of-the-art Li batteries suffer from serious safety hazards caused by the reactivity of lithium and the flammable nature of liquid electrolytes. This work develops highly efficient solid-state electrolytes consisting of imidazolium-containing polyionic liquids (PILs) and lithium bis(trifluoromethane sulfonyl)imide (LiTFSI). By employing PIL/LiTFSI electrolyte membranes blended with poly(propylene carbonate) (PPC), we addressed the problem of combining ionic conductivity and mechanical properties in one material.

Charge-Compensated N-Doped π-Conjugated Polymers: Toward both Thermodynamic Stability of N-Doped States in Water and High Electron Conductivity.

The understanding and applications of electron-conducting π-conjugated polymers with naphtalene diimide (NDI) blocks show remarkable progress in recent years. Such polymers demonstrate a facilitated n-doping due to the strong electron deficiency of the main polymer chain and the presence of the positively charged side groups stabilizing a negative charge of the n-doped backbone. Here, the n-type conducting NDI polymer with enhanced stability of its n-doped states for prospective "in-water" applications is developed.

Charge Carrier Mobility Improvement in Diketopyrrolopyrrole Block-Copolymers by Shear Coating.

Shear coating is a promising deposition method for upscaling device fabrication and enabling high throughput, and is furthermore suitable for translating to roll-to-roll processing. Although common polymer semiconductors (PSCs) are solution processible, they are still prone to mechanical failure upon stretching, limiting applications in e.g.

AB- Versus AA+BB-Suzuki Polycondensation: A Palladium/Tris(tert-butyl)phosphine Catalyst Can Outperform Conventional Catalysts.

A Pd/Pt-Bu catalyst having bulky, electron-rich ligands significantly outperforms conventional "step-growth catalysts" Pd(PPh ) and Pd(Po-Tol ) in the Suzuki polycondensation of the AB-type arylene-based monomers, such as some of the substituted fluorenes, carbazoles, and phenylenes. In the AA+BB polycondensation, Pd/Pt-Bu also performs better under homogeneous reaction conditions, in combination with the organic base Et NOH. The superior performance of Pd/Pt-Bu is discussed in terms of its higher reactivity in the oxidative addition step and inherent advantages of the intramolecular catalyst transfer, which is a key step joining catalytic cycles of the AB-polycondensation.

Layer-by-Layer Assembly Enabled by the Anionic p-Dopant CN6-CPK: a Route to Achieve Interfacial Doping of Organic Semiconductors.

Highly efficient 2D (interfacial) doping of organic semiconductors, poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and TIPS-pentacene, was achieved by a polyelectrolyte-supported layer-by-layer assembly of the dual-mode functional dopant CN6-CPK, having an anionic group for its fixation onto oppositely charged surfaces/molecules as well as electron-deficient groups providing its p-doping ability. Polyelectrolyte-supported dopant layers were used to generate conductive channels at the bottom or at the top of semiconducting films. Unlike to the case of sequentially processed P3HT films doped by F4TCNQ ( Moulé , J.