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Abstract Herein, an unprecedented report is presented on the incorporation of size-dependent gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) capping into a conventional hole transport layer, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS). The hole transport layer blocks ion-diffusion/migration in methylammonium-lead-bromide (MAPbBr3)-based perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) as a modified interlayer. The PVP-capped 90 nm AuNP device exhibited a seven-fold increase in efficiency (1.5%) as compared to the device without AuNPs (0.22%), where the device lifetime was also improved by 17-fold. This advancement is ascribed to the far-field scattering of AuNPs, modified work function and carrier trapping/detrapping. The improvement in device lifetime is attributed to PVP-capping of AuNPs which prevents indium diffusion into the perovskite layer and surface ion migration into PEDOT:PSS through the formation of induced electric dipole. The results also indicate that using large AuNPs (> 90 nm) reduces exciton recombination because of the trapping of excess charge carriers due to the large surface area.

Abstract We propose a method to form polymer walls without the use of a photomask in a liquid crystal (LC) cell by phase separation of an LC mixture induced by a spatial elastic energy difference. When an in-plane electric field is applied to a vertically aligned cell filled with a mixture of LC and a reactive monomer (RM), a high spatial elastic energy is induced along the direction perpendicular to the interdigitated electrodes. RMs move to the boundaries where the elastic energy is very high and an in-plane component of the applied electric field exists, which results in the phase separation of the LC/RM mixture. We have shown that we can form polymer walls by applying ultraviolet light irradiation to the LC cell. These polymer walls can function as alignment layers. We observed morphological patterns of the polymer structure through polarized optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy. The polymer walls formed in an LC cell can affect the orientation of LCs in the lateral direction. Bistable switching of a polymer-walled cell could be achieved by using three-terminal electrodes where both vertical and in-plane electric fields can be applied. Vertical anchoring with the alignment layer on each substrate allows LC molecules to remain vertically aligned after removal of the applied vertical electric field. Furthermore, in-plane anchoring with the formed polymer walls allows the LC molecules to remain homogeneously aligned after removal of the applied in-plane electric field. The proposed method for the formation of polymer structures could be a useful tool to fabricate LC cells for various applications. As a bistable phase-grating device, the diffraction efficiency of a polymer-walled cell was comparable to that of a pure-LC cell. Its operating voltage was 44% lower than that of a pure-LC cell owing to in-plane anchoring provided by the polymer walls. Moreover, it can be operated with very low power because it does not require power to maintain the state. In addition, the total response time of a polymer-walled cell was approximately 68% shorter than that of a pure-LC cell because all switching was forcibly controlled by applying an electric field.

In this study, we present the comparison of device performance measurements for organic light emitting diodes using a spectroradiometer through the viewing angle and integrating sphere, widely used for device measurements. The mean calculation method using these results was applied to convert the spectroradiometer (under different viewing angles) data to match with the integrating sphere measurements. The conversion of the spectroradiometer based quantum efficiency and electroluminescence data from all different angular emission patterns was similar to that of the integrating sphere data within a reasonable range of deviation. As such, it is possible to reduce the recurring costs and required time between these two measurement techniques by bypassing the integrating sphere measurement.

Poly-Si crystallization mechanism is examined by conducting numerical simulations, combining the thermal diffusion equation with a rigorous coupled wave analysis method. The ripples at the boundary of poly-Si grains are modeled as a grating surface structure. Under laser beam irradiation, the melting front profiles are accurately analyzed by including surface diffraction, polarization of the laser, and laser energy density. For two different lasers, XeCl excimer laser (λ = 308 nm) and Yb:YAG solid state laser (λ= 343 nm), the energy density range at which poly-Si grains are gradually ordered was determined. Furthermore, the energy density window of the Yb:YAG laser is found to be four times larger than that of XeCl laser. On the other hand, the Yb:YAG laser may produce amorphous-Si phase after completing the crystallization process. It is suggested that this amorphous-Si phase could be avoided, if a double pulse laser is used.

This paper proposes a systemic approach to upper arm gym-workout classification according to spatio-temporal features depicted by biopotential as well as joint kinematics. The key idea of the proposed approach is to impute a biopotential-kinematic relationship by merging the joint kinematic data into a multichannel electromyography signal and visualizing the merged biopotential-kinematic data as an image. Under this approach, the biopotential-kinematic relationship can be imputed by counting on the functionality of a convolutional neural network: an automatic feature extractor followed by a classifier. First, while a professional trainer is demonstrating upper arm gym-workouts, electromyography and joint kinematic data are measured by an armband-type surface electromyography (sEMG) sensor and a RGB-d camera, respectively. Next, the measured data are augmented by adopting the amplitude adjusted Fourier Transform. Then, the augmented electromyography and joint kinematic data are visualized as one image by merging and calculating pixel components in three different ways. Lastly, for each visualized image type, upper arm gym-workout classification is performed via the convolutional neural network. To analyze classification accuracy, two-way rANOVA is performed with two factors: the level of data augmentation and visualized image type. The classification result substantiates that a biopotential-kinematic relationship can be successfully imputed by merging joint kinematic data in-between biceps- and triceps-electromyography channels and visualizing as a time-series heatmap image.

A method is proposed for confirming the biaxial phase in thermotropic nematic liquid crystals for measuring the electro-optic characteristics. The results have confirmed the biaxial nature of the bent-core mesogen 4,4'-(1,3,4oxadiazole2,5diyl)dipheptylbenzoate (ODBP-Ph-[C.sub.7]).

Poly-Si crystallization mechanism is examined by conducting numerical simulations, combining the thermal diffusion equation with a rigorous coupled wave analysis method. The ripples at the boundary of poly-Si grains are modeled as a grating surface structure. Under laser beam irradiation, the melting front profiles are accurately analyzed by including surface diffraction, polarization of the laser, and laser energy density. For two different lasers, XeCl excimer laser (λ = 308 nm) and Yb:YAG solid state laser (λ= 343 nm), the energy density range at which poly-Si grains are gradually ordered was determined. Furthermore, the energy density window of the Yb:YAG laser is found to be four times larger than that of XeCl laser. On the other hand, the Yb:YAG laser may produce amorphous-Si phase after completing the crystallization process. It is suggested that this amorphous-Si phase could be avoided, if a double pulse laser is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of precision heat capacity measurements near the lower consolute point in aqueous solutions of non-ionic surfactants n-dodecyl hexaethylene glycol monoether (C12E6), C10E6, and C12E8, are reported. These surfactants form homogeneous single phase micellar solutions below the lower consolute point, Tc. The pretransitional specific heat in the homogeneous phase below Tc is found to grow with temperature and exhibits a power-law divergence. Analysis of the data obtained for the three systems reveals that the specific heat exponent, α=-αR/(1-αR)≅0.5, gives credence to mean field behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three banana-shaped achiral compounds, derivatives of 4-chloro-1,3-phenylene bis[4-(4- n -decanyloxyphenyliminomethyl)benzoate], were synthesized with variation of a substituent ( X =H, F, or Cl); their antiferroelectric properties are described. The mesomorphic and switching properties were characterized by polarizing optical microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, triangular wave method, and X-ray diffraction. The introduction of a lateral halogen substituent in the Schiff's base moiety prevents the regular stacking of the molecules, resulting in a decrease of melting temperature and leads to formation of the switchable SmC* phase in the melt. All of the compounds showed antiferroelectric switching, and their values of spontaneous polarization on reversal of an applied electric field were 260, 480, and 300 nC cm -2 , respectively, for X =H, F and Cl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New chiral bent-core mesogens, derivatives of 1,3-phenylene bis[4-(alkanyloxyphenyliminomethyl)benzoate], were synthesized with variation of a substituent ( X =F, Cl); their antiferroelectric properties are described. The mesomorphic and switching properties were characterized by differential scanning calorimetry, polarizing optical microscopy, triangular wave method, and X-ray diffractometry in the small and wide angle regions. The presence of chiral tails at the terminals of side wings in the bent-core molecules induced a decrease in transition temperature and formation of the switchable SmC* phase in the melt. In addition, the introduction of a lateral halogen substituent in the Schiff's base moiety prevented the regular stacking of the molecules, resulting in the formation of very complex optical textures. The smectic phase with F-substituted PBFDOB and Cl-substituted PBCDOB showed layer spacings of 39 and 38.5 Å, respectively, corresponding to the end-to-end distance of molecules with a bent conformation. Significantly, the smectic phases of PBFDOB and PBCDOB exhibited a period of 179.5 and 131 Å, respectively, compatible with a helical structure with periodicity about 4.6 and 3.4 times the layer spacings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a bistable liquid crystal mode based on switching of the twist direction in a conventional π/2-twisted nematic cell. Switching between the -π/2 and +π/2 twist states can be performed by applying vertical and/or in-plane electric fields. The proposed bistable mode has an infinite memory time because the two stable twist states have the same elastic free energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a method to control the pretilt angle of liquid crystals by employing a mixture of the vertical alignment polyimide and the liquid crystalline prepolymer (LCP). The pretilt angle between 10° and 90° can be controlled continuously by changing the mixing ratio of the LCP. Multidomains with different pretilt angles can be formed because the pretilt angle between 50° and 90° can be obtained by varying the UV exposure time region by region under a fixed mixing ratio. We confirmed experimentally that proposed alignment layers are thermally stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We developed amorphous hafnium-indium-zinc oxide (HIZO) thin films as oxide semiconductors and investigated the films electrically and physically. Adding of hafnium (Hf) element can suppress growing the columnar structure and drastically decrease the carrier concentration and hall mobility in HIZO films. The thin film transistors (TFTs) with amorphous HIZO active channel exhibit good electrical properties with field effect mobility of around 10 cm2/Vs, S of 0.23 V/decade, and high Ion/off ratio of over 108, enough to operate the next electronic devices. In particular, under bias-temperature stress test, the HIZO TFTs with 0.3 mol % (Hf content) showed only 0.46 V shift in threshold voltage, compared with 3.25 V shift in HIZO TFT (0.1 mol %). The Hf ions may play a key role to improve the instability of TFTs due to high oxygen bonding ability. Therefore, the amorphous HIZO semiconductor will be a prominent candidate as an operation device for large area electronic applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reflective color filter based on a two-dimensional subwavelength grating is proposed. The filter has been designed by performing numerical simulations and has been fabricated on 5×5 mm2 quartz glass using electron beam lithography. The grating color filter shows reflectance of 74% and spectral width of about 80 nm. Furthermore, it has good angular tolerance, up to ±45°, for unpolarized incident light. By analyzing the reflectance spectral distributions in the band diagram, we found that high angular tolerance is achieved due to the high refractive index contrast of grating structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the homeotropic to twisted-planar (HTP) structural transition in a nematic liquid crystal. Demonstration of the electro-optic effects in the liquid crystal; Applications of the HTP transition; Role of surface anchoring and molecular chirality in HTP transition.