Optimization of Ultrasonic-assisted Extraction and Fatty Acid Composition of Oil from Paeonia suffruticosa Andr. Seed.

Response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to optimize the effects of extraction parameters including time, power, temperature and liquid-to-solid ratio on peony seed oil yield. Box-Behnken design (BBD) was employed for optimization of extraction parameters in oil yield that extracted assisting by ultrasonic while petroleum ether as solvent. The chemical composition of peony seed oil under optimal condition in ultrasonic-assisted extract method was analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS).

Efficient Energy Funneling in Quasi-2D Perovskites: From Light Emission to Lasing.

Quasi-2D Ruddlesden-Popper halide perovskites with a large exciton binding energy, self-assembled quantum wells, and high quantum yield draw attention for optoelectronic device applications. Thin films of these quasi-2D perovskites consist of a mixture of domains having different dimensionality, allowing energy funneling from lower-dimensional nanosheets (high-bandgap domains) to 3D nanocrystals (low-bandgap domains). High-quality quasi-2D perovskite (PEA) (FA) Pb Br films are fabricated by solution engineering.

Long-Wavelength Lead Sulfide Quantum Dots Sensing up to 2600 nm for Short-Wavelength Infrared Photodetectors.

Lead sulfide nanoparticles (PbS NPs) are used in the short-wavelength infrared photodetectors because of their excellent photosensitivity, band gap tunability, and solution processability. It has been a challenge to synthesize high-quality PbS NPs with an absorption peak beyond 2000 nm. In this work, using PbS seed crystals with an absorption peak at 1960 nm, we report a successful synthesis of very large monodispersed PbS NPs having a diameter up to 16 nm by multiple injections.

Randomly Distributed Conjugated Polymer Repeat Units for High-Efficiency Photovoltaic Materials with Enhanced Solubility and Processability.

Three structurally disordered terpolymer derivatives of PffBT4T-2OD (PCE11), prepared by replacing a varied amount of bithiophene linkers with single thiophenes, were found to exhibit reduced aggregation in solution with increasing thiophene content, while important redox and optoelectronic properties remained similar to those of PffBT4T-2OD. Solar cells based on random terpolymer-PCBM blends exhibited average power conversion efficiencies of over 9.5% when processed with preheated substrates, with fill factors above 70%, exceeding those from PffBT4T-2OD.

Increased Exciton Delocalization of Polymer upon Blending with Fullerene.

Interfaces between donor and acceptor in a polymer solar cell play a crucial role in exciton dissociation and charge photogeneration. While the importance of charge transfer (CT) excitons for free carrier generation is intensively studied, the effect of blending on the nature of the polymer excitons in relation to the blend nanomorphology remains largely unexplored. In this work, electroabsorption (EA) spectroscopy is used to study the excited-state polarizability of polymer excitons in several polymer:fullerene blend systems, and it is found that excited-state polarizability of polymer excitons in the blends is a strong function of blend nanomorphology.

Langmuir-Blodgett Thin Films of Diketopyrrolopyrrole-Based Amphiphiles.

We report on two π-conjugated donor-acceptor-donor (D-A-D) molecules of amphiphilic nature, aiming to promote intermolecular ordering and carrier mobility in organic electronic devices. Diketopyrrolopyrrole was selected as the acceptor moiety that was disubstituted with nonpolar and polar functional groups, thereby providing the amphiphilic structures. This structural design resulted in materials with a strong intermolecular order in the solid state, which was confirmed by differential scanning calorimetry and polarized optical microscopy.