The performance of organic semiconductor devices is strongly affected by the interface energetics at junctions between constituent materials. A large group semiconductors consists rodlike small molecules that crystallize upon deposition with a molecular orientation dependent on specifics molecule–molecule and molecule–substrate interactions. By means Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM), this w...

A multiple sequence alignment program, MAFFT, has been developed. The CPU time is drastically reduced as compared with existing methods. MAFFT includes two novel techniques. (i) Homo logous regions are rapidly identified by the fast Fourier transform (FFT), in which an amino acid sequence is converted to a sequence composed of volume and polarity values of each amino acid residue. (ii) We propo...

The effect of heteroalkyl (-XR, X = Se, S, O) substitution on a series molecular semiconductors having 3,3′-diheteroalkyl-2,2′-bithiophene (XBT) central core is studied. Thus, the selenotetradecyl (-SeC14H29) SeBT investigated by end-functionalization with two dithienothiophene (DTT), thienothiophene (TT), and thiophene (T) units to give SeBTs 1–3, respectively, for π-conjugation examination. F...

Conjugated polymers (CPs) have proved to be promising chemosensory materials for detecting nitroaromatic explosives vapors, as they quickly convert a chemical interaction into an easily-measured high-sensitivity optical output. The nitroaromatic analytes are strongly electron-deficient, whereas the conjugated polymer sensing materials are electron-rich. As a result, the photoexcitation of the C...

Three neodymium complexes Nd(TTA)3(DMSO)2 (1, TTA = 2-thenoyltrifluoroacetone), Nd2(BDT)3(DMSO)6 (2, BDT = bis(4,4,4-trifluoro-1,3-dioxobutyl)thiophene) and Nd2(BTT)3(DMSO)4 (3, BTT = bis(4,4,4-trifluoro-1,3-dioxobutyl)(2,2'-bithiophene)) constructed from three thiophene-based β-diketonate ligands, were prepared for the purpose of building the relationships between the structures, energy levels...

Recent developments towards future polymer electronics are aimed at different applications as organic displays, complementary circuits, and all-polymer integrated circuits [1-3]. Basic devices are organic field-effect transistors (OFET, cross section in Figs.2 and 3) with an active layer made from an organic material. Until now the achieved performance of OFET's is not sufficient for envisaged ...

Dithienogermole (DTG) is a germanium-bridged bithiophene system that has been applied as a building unit of conjugated materials for organic electronic devices, including organic photovoltaics and organic light emitting diodes. However, DTG has not been used as a component of sensitizers for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). In this work, we have synthesized three D-π-A-π-A type sensitizers c...

The measurement and optimization of microstructure development in organic semiconductor films is valuable because microstructure in many cases critically impacts electronic performance. We demonstrate a general method to measure microstructure thickness dependence in thin films using surface-sensitive near edge X-ray absorbance fine structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy. The method is applied to an o...

N-doping of conjugated polymers either requires a high dopant fraction or yields a low electrical conductivity because of their poor compatibility with molecular dopants. We explore n-doping of the polar naphthalenediimide-bithiophene copolymer p(gNDI-gT2) that carries oligoethylene glycol-based side chains and show that the polymer displays superior miscibility with the benzimidazole-dimethylb...