Motivated by recent experiments on the electro-hydrodynamic instability of spincast polymer films, we study the undulation instability of a thin viscoelastic polymer film under in-plane stress and in the presence of either a close by contactor or an electric field, both inducing a normal stress on the film surface. We find that the in-plane stress affects both the typical timescale of the insta...

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a powerful characterization tool for polymer science, capable of revealing surface structures with superior spatial resolution. AFM is extremely useful for studying the local surface molecular composition and mechanical properties of a broad range of polymer materials, including block copolymers, bulk polymers, thin-film polymers, polymer composites, and polymer...

Nanoscopically confined polymer films are known to exhibit substantially depressed glass transition temperatures (Lg's) as compared to the corresponding bulk materials. We report here that pentacene thin films grown on polymer gate dielectrics at temperatures well below their bulk Tg's exhibit distinctive and abrupt morphological and microstructural transitions and thin-film transistor (TFT) pe...

– We have used quantitative X-ray microscopy in combination with Scanning Force Microscopy to monitor the phase separation of spun cast thin films of polystyrene and poly(methyl methacrylate) blends upon annealing. Both techniques complement and enhance each other in elucidating the complicated structures that develop as a function of annealing time. We have determined the composition of the mi...

The synthesis of lead sulfide nanocrystals within a solution processable sulfur 'inverse vulcanization' polymer thin film matrix was achieved from the in situ thermal decomposition of lead(II) n-octylxanthate, [Pb(S2COOct)2]. The growth of nanocrystals within polymer thin films from single-source precursors offers a faster route to networks of nanocrystals within polymers when compared with ex ...

In recent years, the demand for thin film coatings on large area substrates has been rapidly increasing. Coating is some times required to make an object harder, or to provide the surface with particular electrical and optical properties. Hence, research on thin film science has received much attention due to its tremendous applications in modern technology. The importance of coatings and the s...

The arch-shaped single electrode based triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is fabricated using thin film of reduced graphene oxide nanoribbons (rGONRs) with polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) polymer used as binder to effectively convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. The incorporation of rGONRs in PVDF polymer enhances average surface roughness of rGONRs/PVDF thin film. With the combinat...

This article investigates hole transport in poly[2-methoxy-5-(2'-ethyl-hexyloxy)1,4-phenylene vinylene] (MEH-PPV)/CdSe colloidal quantum dot (CQD) nanocomposites using a modified time-of-flight photoconductivity technique. The measured hole drift mobilities are analyzed in the context of Bässler’s Gaussian disorder model and the correlated disorder model in order to determine the polymer intern...

We discuss a recently proposed novel photonic approach for enhancing the fluorescence of extremely thin chemosensing polymer layers. We present theoretical and experimental results demonstrating the concept of gain-assisted waveguided energy transfer (G-WET) on a very thin polymer nanolayer spincoated on an active ZnO thin film. The G-WET approach is shown to result in an 8-fold increase in pol...

Thin polymer films have striking dynamical properties that differ from their bulk counterparts. With the simple geometry of a stepped polymer film on a substrate, we probe mobility above and below the glass transition temperature Tg. Above Tg the entire film flows, whereas below Tg only the near-surface region responds to the excess interfacial energy. An analytical thin-film model for flow lim...