Efficient Organic Solar Cells Enabled by Simple Non-Fused Electron Donors with Low Synthetic Complexity.

Fused-ring electron donors boost the efficiency of organic solar cells (OSCs), but they suffer from high cost and low yield for their large synthetic complexity (SC > 30%). Herein, the authors develop a series of simple non-fused-ring electron donors, PF1 and PF2, which alternately consist of furan-3-carboxylate and 2,2'-bithiophene. Note that PF1 and PF2 present very small SC of 9.7% for their inexpensive raw materials, facile synthesis, and high synthetic yield. Compared to their all-thiophene-backbone counterpart PT-E, two new polymers feature larger conjugated plane, resulting in higher hole mobility for them, especially a value up to ≈10-4 cm2 V-1 ·s for PF2 with longer alkyl side chain. Meanwhile, PF1 and PF2 exhibit larger dielectric constant and deeper electronic energy level versus PT-E. Benefiting from the better physicochemical properties, the efficiencies of PF1- and PF2-based devices are improved by ≈16.7% and ≈71.3% relative to that PT-E-based devices, respectively. Furthermore, the optimized PF2-based devices with introducing PC71 BM as the third component deliver a higher efficiency of 12.40%. The work not only indicates that furan-3-carboxylate is a simple yet efficient building block for constructing non-fused-ring polymers but also provides a promising electron donor PF2 for the low-cost production of OSCs.

Dynamic floc characteristics of flocculated coal slime water under different agent conditions using particle vision and measurement.

To determine the effect of different agents on the dynamic characteristics of floc structures, ferric chloride (FC) and anionic polyacrylamide (APAM) were dosed as coagulant and flocculant, respectively, to flocculate the coal slime water. Particle vision and measurement (PVM) was employed to monitor the flocculation process in situ. The results showed that the floc could grow to a size of approximately 1 mm only under conditions of 100 mg/L FC and 50 mg/L APAM. The coagulant dosage influenced either the aggregation of the slime particles or the conformation of the flocculant. If the coagulants were insufficient or excessive, the flocculant conformations were stretch chains and resembled unable to bridging the slime particles as shown in the captured images. The variation of the relative backscatter index (RBI) during the process indicated that the required residence time for flocculation was proportional to the ratio of particle size at the end of flocculation to that at the beginning of the process. It can be concluded that PVM is an effective instrument that can obtain useful dynamic information of the flocculation process by combining real-time images and the RBI. PRACTITIONER POINTS: The coagulant concentration affects the conformation of the flocculant. The required retention time is depended on the max size that flocs can reach. PVM is a powerful instrument for studying dynamic flocculation process in situ.

PEDOT nanocomposites mediated dual-modal photodynamic and photothermal targeted sterilization in both NIR I and II window.

PEDOT nanoparticles with a suitable nanosize of 17.2 nm, broad adsorption from 700 to 1250 nm, and photothermal conversion efficiency (η) of 71.1%, were synthesized using an environmentally friendly hydrothermal method. Due to the electrostatic attraction between indocyanine green (ICG) and PEDOT, the stability of ICG in aqueous solution was effectively improved. The PEDOT nanoparticles modified with glutaraldehyde (GTA) targeted bacteria directly, and MTT experiments demonstrated the low toxicity of PEDOT:ICG@PEG-GTA in different bacteria and cells. Pathogenic bacteria were effectively killed by photodynamic therapy (PDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT) with PEDOT:ICG@PEG-GTA in the presence of near-infrared (NIR) irradiation (808 nm for PDT, and 1064 nm for PTT). The combination of the two different bacteriostatic methods was significantly more effective than PTT or PDT alone. The obtained PEDOT:ICG@PEG-GTA may be used as a novel synergistic agent in combination photodynamic and photothermal therapy to inactivate pathogenic bacteria in both the NIR I and II window.