We study the enhanced dewetting of ultrathin Polystyrene (PS)/Poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) blend films in a mixed solution, and reveal the dewetting can act as a simple and effective method to fabricate large-area surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate. A bilayer structure consisting of under PMMA layer and upper PS layer forms due to vertical phase separation of immiscible PS/...

A new copolymer of dithienosilole (DTS) and dithienyl-s-tetrazine (TTz), PDTSTTz, has been designed and synthesized. This solution processable polymer shows a low band gap, strong absorption and good thermal stability. Solar cells from the blend of this polymer with PC(71)BM showed power conversion efficiency (PCE) up to 4.2%.

We demonstrate how organic solar cell efficiency can be increased by introducing a pure polymer interlayer between the PEDOT:PSS layer and the polymer:fullerene blend. We observe an increase in device efficiency with three different material systems over a number of devices. Using both electrical characterization and numerical modeling we show that the increase in efficiency is caused by optica...

We have synthesised and characterised a new low-gap conjugated polymer, with a broad absorption profile. In blends with a C(70) derivative we demonstrate power conversion efficiencies of 0.76%. We show electroluminescence from the polymer peaking at 956 nm, and quantum efficiency of 0.02% in a blend.

A novel process for obtaining controlled morphologies in polymer blends is modeled numerically. Particles of one type of polymer are allowed to dissolve in a matrix of a dissimilar polymer. Prior to complete dissolution the blend is quenched into the two-phase region, such that phase separation takes place. The combination of the incomplete dissolution and the wavelength selection process assoc...

We present simulations on a binary blend of bead-spring polymer chains. The introduction of monomer size disparity yields very different relaxation times for each component of the blend. Competition between two different arrest mechanisms, namely, bulklike dynamics and confinement, leads to an anomalous relaxation scenario for the fast component, characterized by sublinear time dependence for m...

Fabrication of nanocomposites from immiscible polymer blend system has been represented in this work. A new type of natural clay named Halloysite Nanotubes (HNTs) are modified by Polyethyleneimine (PEI) and these PEI grafted HNTs are incorporated into the immiscible blend system during melt mixing process to prepare halloysite based nanocomposites. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR)...

We investigate the effect of interfacial buffer layers—vanadium oxide V2O5 and cesium carbonate Cs2CO3 —on the performance of polymer solar cells based on regioregular poly3-hexylthiophene and 6,6 -phenyl C60 butyric acid methyl ester blend. The polarity of solar cells can be controlled by the relative positions of these two interfacial layers. Efficient inverted polymer solar cells were fabric...