The exothermic reaction route of a self-heatable conductive ink for rapid processable printed electronics.

We report the exothermic reaction route and new capability of a self-heatable conductive ink (Ag2O and silver 2,2-dimethyloctanoate) in order to achieve both a low sintering temperature and electrical resistivity within a short sintering time for flexible printed electronics and display appliances. Unlike conventional conductive ink, which requires a costly external heating instrument for rapid sintering, self-heatable conductive ink by itself is capable of generating heat as high as 312 °C when its exothermic reaction is triggered at a temperature of 180 °C. This intensive exothermic reaction is found to result from the recursive reaction of the 2,2-dimethyloctanoate anion, which is thermally dissociated from silver 2,2-dimethyloctanoate, with silver oxide microparticles.

Rapid two-step metallization through physicochemical conversion of Ag2O for printed "black" transparent conductive films.

A rapid two-step metallization for fabrication of a "black" transparent conductive film on a flexible substrate for display applications is presented, using a mixture of silver oxide (Ag2O) and silver neodecanoate (C10H19AgO2), and its electrical conductivity and colour transition behaviours are investigated. Silver nanoparticles, which are physicochemically converted from silver oxide microparticles in the presence of silver neodecanoate in the course of the first metallization step at 150 °C for 10 min, are chemically annealed by immersing them in an acidic ferric chloride (FeCl3) solution at room temperature for 10 s. During this second metallization step, silver nanoparticles are found to be tightly packed through Ostwald ripening, which eventually leads to the dramatic enhancement of electrical conductivity by six orders of magnitude from 1.

Adsorption-stress relationship in drying of silica/PVA suspensions.

In this study, we investigated drying process of silica/PVA suspensions. After measuring the amount of polymer adsorption and the stress evolution of a film during drying process, we could find a quantitative relationship between polymer adsorption and stress development, for silica/PVA suspensions of different pH and mixing time. For all the suspensions of different pH, both the amount of polymer adsorption (Γ) and the plateau stress of dry film (σ(p)) could be scaled onto a single master curve as a function of mixing time (t(m)).

Preparation and infrared/raman classification of 630 spectroscopically encoded styrene copolymers.

The barcoded resins (BCRs) were introduced recently as a platform for encoded combinatorial chemistry. One of the main challenges yet to be overcome is the demonstration that a large number of BCRs could be generated and classified with high confidence. Here, we describe the synthesis and classification of 630 polystyrene-based copolymers prepared from the combinatorial association of 15 spectroscopically active styrene monomers.

Characterization of the optical properties of silver nanoparticle films.

To understand the collective properties of nanoparticles, it is necessary to control the particle size, spacing and ordering. Here we describe the chemical synthesis of well-controlled silver nanoparticles, the wet coat preparation and the optical properties of its film. The light incidence angle and polarization dependency of the resonant spectra show distinctive surface plasmon resonance extinction peaks for isolated particles and the coupled modes of neighbouring particles.

Classification of spectroscopically encoded resins by Raman mapping and infrared hyperspectral imaging.

Barcoded resins (BCRs) were recently introduced as a potential platform for pre-encoded multiplexed synthesis, screening, and biomedical diagnostics. A key step toward the development of this strategy is the ability to rapidly interrogate and classify the BCRs in a high-throughput, noninvasive manner. Here, we describe a one-step strategy based on Raman mapping and Fourier transform infrared imaging to classify and spatially resolve randomly distributed BCRs.

Spectroscopically encoded resins for high throughput imaging time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry.

Spectroscopic barcoding was recently introduced as a new pre-encoding strategy wherein the resin beads are not just carriers for solid phase synthesis, but are, in addition, the repository of the synthetic scheme to which they were subjected. To expand the repertoire of spectroscopically barcoded resins (BCRs), here we introduce a new family of halogenated polystyrene-based polymers designed for high-throughput combinatorial analysis using not only infrared and Raman spectroscopy but also imaging time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS). In particular, we have established that (a) the halogen content of these new resins can be used as an encoding element in quantitative imaging ToF-SIMS and (b) the number of styrene monomers used to generate unique vibrational fingerprints can be significantly reduced by using monomers in different molar ratios.

Highly selective Ba2+ separations with acyclic, lipophilic di-[N-(X)sulfonyl carbamoyl] polyethers.

New lipophilic acyclic polyethers with two N-(X)sulfonyl carbamoyl groups of "tunable" acidity exhibit remarkable selectivity for Ba2+ over other alkaline earth metal ions in competitive solvent extraction and transport across polymer inclusion membranes.

Preparation, physical properties, on-bead binding assay and spectroscopic reliability of 25 barcoded polystyrene-poly(ethylene glycol) graft copolymers.

Here we describe the preparation of 25 beaded polystyrene-poly(ethylene glycol) graft copolymers from six spectroscopically active styrene monomers: styrene, 2,5-dimethylstyrene, 4-methylstyrene, 2,4-dimethylstyrene, 4-tert-butylstyrene, and 3-methylstyrene. These polymers were thoroughly characterized by Raman, infrared, and (1)H/(13)C NMR spectroscopies, and differential scanning calorimetry. Determination of the swelling properties, peptide synthesis, and on-bead streptavidin-alkaline phosphatase (SAP) binding assay further established that their physical and chemical properties where not significantly altered by the diversity of their encoded polystyrene core.