Improving power conversion efficiency in polythiophene/fullerene-based bulk heterojunction solar cells

In the present work, we have studied photovoltaic devices fabricated from a blend of regioregular poly (3-hexlthiophene) (P3HT) and Buckminster fullerene. The solvent and composite ratio have been selected to obtain best morphology and minimum degradation. Buffer layers of poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) poly (styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) at the anode and of LiF at the cathode were used to improve the device performance. It was further found that post-annealing of the devices for an optimum duration and temperature improves the solar cells, and the power conversion efficiency of the devices increases to 2.1% at AM1.5. Though the efficiency using [6,6]-phenyl C60 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) as the composite acceptor instead of C₆₀ can be higher, it was not used because of its very high cost as compared to C₆₀.     

Development and characterization of an efficient bio-white polymer light-emitting diode with red and green phosphorescent dyes as dopants

An efficient white polymer light-emitting diode (WPLED) with stable Commission Internationale de l’éclairage (CIE) coordinates is fabricated. A blue electroluminescence (EL)-emitting conducting polymer [poly(9,9-di-n-hexyl-fluorenyl-2,7-diyl)] is used as a host for red [Bis(1-phenyl-isoquinoline)(acetylacetonate)iridium(III)] and green [iridium(III)tris(2-(4-tolyl)pyridinato-N,C²)] phosphorescent dyes. Although efficient triplet energy transfer is not possible in the green phosphorescent dye, the self-trapping mechanism is utilized for the emission of EL in the green region while an efficient triplet exciton energy transfer from the host to the red dye is utilized for EL in the red wavelength region. Concentrations of the three constituents are optimized to obtain pure white light of appropriate CIE coordinates. An efficient electron-blocking layer based on a biomaterial (salmon-DNA) is also incorporated in the WPLED to improve the device performance. The WPLED shows three distinguished peaks for the primary colors and achieved a maximum luminance and luminous efficiency of 350 cd/m² and 0.86 cd/A, respectively.     

Improved principal component monitoring using the local approach

This paper shows that current multivariate statistical monitoring technology may not detect incipient changes in the variable covariance structure nor changes in the geometry of the underlying variable decomposition. To overcome these deficiencies, the local approach is incorporated into the multivariate statistical monitoring framework to define two new univariate statistics for fault detection. Fault isolation is achieved by constructing a fault diagnosis chart which reveals changes in the covariance structure resulting from the presence of a fault. A theoretical analysis is presented and the proposed monitoring approach is exemplified using application studies involving recorded data from two complex industrial processes.