Copper Nanowire/Polydopamine-Modified Sodium Alginate Composite Films with Enhanced Long-Term Stability and Adhesion for Flexible Organic Light-Emitting Diodes.

Copper nanowire (CuNW), with combined advantages of high conductivity and cost-effectiveness, is considered a promising material for the development of next-generation transparent conductive films (TCFs) in the field of flexible optoelectronics. However, the practical application of CuNW TCFs is hindered by some limitations, such as conductivity degradation and poor adhesion. Here, we demonstrate a stable CuNW composite film by embedding CuNWs into a polydopamine (PDA)-modified sodium alginate (NaAlg) matrix without sacrificing the optoelectronic properties of the CuNW network. The introduction of the PDA modifier significantly enhances the antiaging capability of the NaAlg layer, providing strengthened protection of the embedded CuNWs against moisture and oxygen, thereby resulting in minimal degradation of the conductivity of CuNWs for up to 9 months under ambient conditions. Simultaneously, the interface adhesion between the CuNW network and the substrate is further enhanced due to the abundance of catechol structures in PDA, allowing for the maintenance of the electrical conductivity of the CuNW network even under cyclic external bending stress and tape-peeling forces. In addition, embedding CuNWs into the polymer binding layer produces a CuNW composite film with a very smooth surface. A flexible OLED based on the PDA-modified NaAlg/CuNW TCF is successfully fabricated, exhibiting performance comparable to that of a traditional rigid indium tin oxide-based device, while also demonstrating remarkable mechanical durability. The modification strategy can promote practical applications of the CuNW network in flexible optoelectronic devices.

Metal-Organic Framework-Modified Silver Nanowire Transparent Film with Enhanced Conductivity and Stability for Efficient Organic Light-Emitting Diodes.

Silver nanowire (AgNW) is recognized as a critical material for developing the next generation of transparent conductive films (TCFs); however, poor stability remains a major issue. Herein, we demonstrate a stable AgNW TCF passivated by a metal-organic framework (MOF) via a facile solution process. The MOF is chemically bonded to the surface of the AgNWs as a chemical inhibitor, which contributes to passivating highly active sites and providing chemical protection, leading to enhanced resistance to corrosive molecules and thereby offering exceptional stability under an ambient atmosphere. Simultaneously, the binding interaction with the MOF anchors silver atoms at the surface of the nanowires, suppressing their diffusion at high temperatures and allowing the AgNW film to maintain excellent conductivity up to 300 °C. Additionally, the hydrogen bonding between the MOF and the substrate, along with the tight connection of the MOF with AgNWs, improves the welding between the nanowires, enhancing the conductivity of the AgNW film at mild conditions while offering good flexibility and adhesion properties. Furthermore, the OLED device integrating the MOF-modified AgNW electrode shows comparable performance to an indium tin oxide-based device, verifying its huge potential for applications in optoelectronic devices.

Enhancing the performance of LARP-synthesized CsPbBr3 nanocrystal LEDs by employing a dual hole injection layer.

Lead halide perovskites have been considered promising materials for optoelectronic applications owing to their superior properties. CsPbBr3 nanocrystals (NCs) with a narrow particle size distribution and a narrow emission spectrum are synthesized by ligand-assisted re-precipitation (LARP), a low-cost and facile process. In inverted CsPbBr3 NC LEDs, a dual hole injection layer (HIL) of 1,4,5,8,9,11-hexaazatriphenylene-hexacarbonitrile (HAT-CN)/MoO3 is introduced to enhance hole injection and transport, because HAT-CN can extract electrons easily from the hole transport layer and leave a large number of holes there. The current and power efficiencies of the optimized device with a dual HIL are 1.5- and 1.8-fold higher than those of the single HIL device. It is believed that the dual HAT-CN/MoO3 HIL effectively promotes hole injection and has promise for application in many other devices.

High efficiency green OLEDs based on homoleptic iridium complexes with steric phenylpyridazine ligands.

A series of steric phenylpyridazine based homoleptic iridium(iii) complexes (1-3) have been synthesized with novel one-pot methods. Single X-ray structural analyses are conducted on complexes 1 and 2 to reveal their coordination arrangement. These complexes exhibit a very strong green phosphorescence emission with high quantum yields of over 64%. The relationship between photophysical properties and the substituent nature of the complexes is discussed by density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT. Self-quenching is significantly reduced for these complexes in solid even at very high concentrations because the sterically hindered bicyclo [2.2.2] oct-2-ene and m-substituted CF3 spacers in the phosphor molecules lead to minimum bimolecular interactions. Accordingly, the electroluminescence device based on complex 3 exhibits a maximum luminous efficiency of 64.1 cd A-1 with a high EQE of 25.2% at a high doping concentration of 15 wt%. Meanwhile, when neat 3 was adopted as the emitting layer, the non-doped green device gives a state-of-the-art EQE as high as 15.2% (40.1 cd A-1) along with CIE coordinates of (0.346, 0.599).

Coupling effects in 3D plasmonic structures templated by Morpho butterfly wings.

This paper presents the study of the coupling effects of three dimensional (3D) plasmonic nanostructures templated by Morpho butterfly wings. Different from the random deposition of metallic nanoparticles (NPs) or conformal coating of metallic layers on butterfly wings reported previously, the 3D plasmonic nanostructures studied in this work consist of gold (Au) nanostrips quasi-periodically arranged in 3D, which allows us to investigate the plasmonic coupling effects. Through refractive index (RI) matching, the plasmonic coupling can be differentiated from the optical contribution of butterfly wings. By tuning the deposition thickness of Au from 30 to 90 nm, the plasmonic coupling effects between the 3D Au nanostrips are gradually enhanced. In particular, the near-field coupling results in two resonant modes and enhances the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) signals.

Highly Conductive and Uniform Alginate/Silver Nanowire Composite Transparent Electrode by Room Temperature Solution Processing for Organic Light Emitting Diode.

A novel transparent electrode composed of alginate/silver nanowire (AgNW) with high conductivity and low roughness is fabricated via a solution process at room temperature. The sol-gel transition of the alginate triggered by CaCl2 solution bonds the AgNWs to the substrate tightly. Meanwhile, Cl- in the solution can renovate the cracks on the AgNW surfaces created during the mechanical pressing, resulting in a great increase of the electrical conductivity. The alginate/AgNW composite film can reach a sheet resistance of 2.3 Ω/sq with a transmittance of 83% at 550 nm. The conductivity of the composite film remains stable after bending and tape tests, demonstrating excellent flexibility and great adhesion of AgNWs to the substrate. Moreover, the composite film shows better stability to resist longtime storage than conventional annealed-AgNW film. The organic light emitting diode using such alginate/AgNW composite film as anode presents current densities and luminances comparable to those of indium tin oxide (ITO) anode, and higher efficiencies are obtained due to the better charge balance.

A Unique Blend of 2-Fluorenyl-2-anthracene and 2-Anthryl-2-anthracence Showing White Emission and High Charge Mobility.

White-light-emitting materials with high mobility are necessary for organic white-light-emitting transistors, which can be used for self-driven OLED displays or OLED lighting. In this study, we combined two materials with similar structures-2-fluorenyl-2-anthracene (FlAnt) with blue emission and 2-anthryl-2-anthracence (2A) with greenish-yellow emission-to fabricate OLED devices, which showed unusual solid-state white-light emission with the CIE coordinates (0.33, 0.34) at 10 V. The similar crystal structures ensured that the OTFTs based on mixed FlAnt and 2A showed high mobility of 1.56 cm2 V-1 s-1 . This simple method provides new insight into the design of high-performance white-emitting transistor materials and structures.

Phosphorus and silicon-bridged stilbenes: synthesis and optoelectronic properties.

Blue light-emitting phosphorus and silicon-bridged stilbenes have been synthesized and characterized. The organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) fabricated with these compounds demonstrate that this new type of phospholes is a promising material for deep blue fluorescence emitters.

Substrateless Welding of Self-Assembled Silver Nanowires at Air/Water Interface.

Integrating connected silver nanowire networks with flexible polymers has appeared as a popular way to prepare flexible electronics. To reduce the contact resistance and enhance the connectivity between silver nanowires, various welding techniques have been developed. Herein, rather than welding on solid supporting substrates, which often requires complicated transferring operations and also may pose damage to heat-sensitive substrates, we report an alternative approach to prepare easily transferrable conductive networks through welding of self-assembled silver nanowires at the air/water interface using plasmonic heating. The intriguing welding behavior of partially aligned silver nanowires was analyzed with combined experimental observation and theoretical modeling. The underlying water not only physically supports the assembled silver nanowires but also buffers potential overheating during the welding process, thereby enabling effective welding within a broad range of illumination power density and illumination duration. The welded networks could be directly integrated with PDMS substrates to prepare high-performance stable flexible heaters that are stretchable, bendable, and can be easily patterned to explore selective heating applications.

Angular BN-Heteroacenes with syn-Structure-Induced Promising Properties as Host Materials of Blue Organic Light-Emitting Diodes.

A series of novel angular BN-heteroacenes were successfully synthesized. Associated with the intrinsic syn-structures, they exhibit unique molecular alignments in a solid state and promising electronic properties, and are thus suitable as efficient nondoped emitters for the fabrication of blue organic light-emitting diodes with improved performance.

Highly efficient and stable electron injection layer for inverted organic light-emitting diodes.

A highly efficient and stable electron injection layer (EIL) for inverted organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) is developed. A 1 nm-thick Al is deposited between indium tin oxide cathode and commonly used Cs2CO3 EIL, which can significantly improve the stability. The Al may react with evaporated Cs2CO3 and form a much stabler Al-O-Cs complex, avoiding Cs oxidization by air according to X-ray photoemission spectroscopy measurement. When the Al is evaporated after Cs2CO3 layer, although such a Al-O-Cs complex also forms, the inferior electron injection at Al/4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline interface leads to a joule heat-induced resistance that adversely affects the air stability of the device. It is expected that the developed Al/Cs2CO3 EIL promotes high efficiency and stable active-matrix OLEDs based on n-type thin film transistor.

Infrared detection based on localized modification of Morpho butterfly wings.

Inspired by butterflies an advanced detection and sensing system is developed. The hierarchical nanoarchitecture of Morpho butterfly wings is shown to facilitate the selective modification of such a structure, which results in a sensitive infrared response. These findings offer a new path both for detecting infrared photons and for generating nanostructured bimaterial systems for high-performance sensing platforms.

Using a layer-by-layer assembly method to fabricate a uniform and conductive nitrogen-doped graphene anode for indium-tin oxide-free organic light-emitting diodes.

Highly conductive, uniform, and transparent nitrogen-doped graphene multilayer films were produced by a layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly method. Such a technique was realized by alternate deposition of graphene oxide modified with the cationic surfactant N,N,N-trimethyl-1-dodecanaminium bromide (CTAB) and the anionic surfactant sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate. In this way, we can achieve a highly conductive (900 S/cm), uniform, and controllable graphene film in terms of thickness, transmittance, and sheet resistance after high-temperature reduction. The improved conductivity is attributed to better graphitization and nitrogen-doping introduced by CTAB. The organic light-emitting diode using such a multilayer graphene film fabricated by the LbL method as an anode obtains higher current density and luminance at low voltage compared to that with an indium-tin oxide (ITO) anode. Moreover, the current efficiency of graphene-based device is comparable to that of an ITO-based device. It is proved that such a nitrogen-doped multilayer graphene film developed by the LbL assembly technique is a promising candidate for a transparent electrode in organic electronics.

Ladder-type BN-embedded heteroacenes with blue emission.

Using a concise synthetic strategy, a series of novel ladder-type BN-embedded heteroacenes were successfully synthesized. Their molecular skeletons render the versatile modification which is desirable for achieving unique physical properties. Organic light-emitting diode devices based on BN-embedded heteroacenes were subsequently fabricated, demonstrating their promising application as blue emitters.

Twisted D-π-A solid emitters: efficient emission and high contrast mechanochromism.

Triphenylacrylonitrile and diarylamine based D-π-A luminogens exhibit typical AIE characteristics with high solid state efficiency up to unity and switchable mechanochromism with high contrast, which render them multifunctional materials for versatile applications in optical storage, volatile organic compound (VOC) detection, OLEDs, etc.