Morphology Control Enables Efficient Ternary Organic Solar Cells

Ternary organic solar cells are promising alternatives to the binary counterpart due to their potential in achieving high performance. Although a growing number of ternary organic solar cells are recently reported, less effort is devoted to morphology control. Here, ternary organic solar cells are fabricated using a wide‐bandgap polymer PBT1‐C as the donor, a crystalline fused‐ring electron acceptor ITIC‐2Cl, and an amorphous fullerene derivative indene‐C₆₀ bisadduct (ICBA) as the acceptor. It is found that ICBA can disturb π–π interactions of the crystalline ITIC‐2Cl molecules in ternary blends and then help to form more uniform morphology. As a result, incorporation of 20% ICBA in the PBT1‐C:ITIC‐2Cl blend enables efficient charge dissociation, negligible bimolecular recombination, and balanced charge carrier mobilities. An impressive power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 13.4%, with a high fill factor (FF) of 76.8%, is eventually achieved, which represents one of the highest PCEs reported so far for organic solar cells. The results manifest that the adoption of amorphous fullerene acceptor is an effective approach to optimizing the ternary blend morphology and thereby increases the solar cell performance.     

Efficient Energy Optimized Faithful Adder with Parallel Carry Generation

Approximate computing has received significant attention in the design of portable CMOS hardware for error-tolerant applications. This work proposes an approximate adder that to optimize area delay and achieve energy efficiency using Parallel Carry (PC) generation logic. For ‘n’ bits in input, the proposed algorithm use approximate addition for least n/2 significant bits and exact addition for most n/2 significant bits. A simple OR logic with no carry propagation is used to implement the approximate part. In the exact part, addition is performed using 4-bit adder blocks that implement PC at block level to reduce node capacitance in the critical path. Evaluations reveal that the maximum error of the proposed adder confines not more than 2^n/2. As an enhancement of the proposed algorithm, we use the Error Recovery (ER) module to reduce the average error. Synthesis results of Proposed-PC (P-PC) and Proposed-PCER (P-PCER) adders with n-16 in 180nm Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) PDK technology revealed 44.2% & 41.7% PDP reductions and 43.4% & 40.7% ADP reductions, respectively compared to the latest best approximate design compared. The functional and driving effectiveness of proposed adders are examined through digital image processing applications.     

Patterning and Templating for Nanoelectronics

The semiconductor industry will soon be launching 32 nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology node using 193 nm lithography patterning technology to fabricate microprocessors with more than 2 billion transistors. To ensure the survival of Moore's law, alternative patterning techniques that offer advantages beyond conventional top‐down patterning are aggressively being explored. It is evident that most alternative patterning techniques may not offer compelling advantages to succeed conventional top‐down lithography for silicon integrated circuits, but alternative approaches may well indeed offer functional advantages in realising next‐generation information processing nanoarchitectures such as those based on cellular, bioinsipired, magnetic dot logic, and crossbar schemes. This paper highlights and evaluates some patterning methods from the Center on Functional Engineered Nano Architectonics in Los Angeles and discusses key benchmarking criteria with respect to CMOS scaling.     

A Novel Design of Octal-Valued Logic Full Adder Using Light Color State Model

Due to the demand of high computational speed for processing big data that requires complex data manipulations in a timely manner, the need for extending classical logic to construct new multi-valued optical models becomes a challenging and promising research area. This paper establishes a novel octal-valued logic design model with new optical gates construction based on the hypothesis of Light Color State Model to provide an efficient solution to the limitations of computational processing inherent in the electronics computing. We provide new mathematical definitions for both of the binary OR function and the PLUS operation in multi valued logic that is used as the basis of novel construction for the optical full adder model. Four case studies were used to assure the validity of the proposed adder. These cases proved that the proposed optical 8-valued logic models provide significantly more information to be packed within a single bit and therefore the abilities of data representation and processing is increased.     

Improved Domain Size and Purity Enables Efficient All‐Small‐Molecule Ternary Solar Cells

An all‐small‐molecule ternary solar cell is achieved with a power conversion efficiency of 10.48% by incorporating phenyl‐C₇₁‐butyric‐acid‐methyl ester (PC₇₁BM) into a nonfullerene binary system. The addition of PC₇₁BM is found to modulate the film morphology by improving the domain purity and decreasing the domain size. This modulation facilitates charge generation and suppresses charge recombination, as manifested by the significantly enhanced short‐circuit current density and fill factor. The results correlate the domain characteristics with the device performance and offer new insight from the perspective of morphology modulation for constructing efficient ternary devices.     

Self-Catalytic Ternary Compounds for Efficient Synthesis of High-Quality Boron Nitride Nanotubes

The large-scale synthesis of high-quality boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) has attracted considerable interests due to their applications in nanocomposites, thermal management, and so on. Despite decades of development, efficient preparation of high-quality BNNTs, which relies on the effective design of precursors and catalysts and deep insights into the catalytic mechanisms, is still urgently needed. Here, a self-catalytic process is designed to grow high-quality BNNTs using ternary W–B–Li compounds. W–B–Li compounds provide boron source and catalyst for BNNTs growth. High-quality BNNTs are successfully obtained via this approach. Density functional theory-based molecular dynamics (DFT-MD) simulations demonstrate that the Li intercalation into the lattice of W₂B₅ promotes the formation of W–B–Li liquid and facilitates the compound evaporation for efficient BNNTs growth. This work demonstrates a high-efficient self-catalytic growth of high-quality BNNTs via ternary W–B–Li compounds, providing a new understanding of high-quality BNNTs growth.     

Nanoelectronics: A topological twist for transistors

A nanoribbon of a material with topological surface states has been used as the channel in a field-effect transistor.     

Demultiplexers for Nanoelectronics Constructed From Nonlinear Tunneling Resistors

When using linear resistors to implement nanoelectronic resistor-logic demultiplexers, codes can be used to improve the voltage margins of these circuits. However, the resistors which have been fabricated in nanoscale crossbars are observed to be nonlinear in their current versus voltage (I-V) characteristics, showing an exponential dependence of current on voltage; we call these devices tunneling resistors. The introduction of nonlinearity can either improve or degrade the voltage margin of a demultiplexer circuit, depending on the particular code used. Therefore, the criterion for choosing codes must be redefined for demultiplexer circuits built from this type of nonlinear resistor. We show that for well-chosen codes, the nonlinearity of the resistors can be advantageous, producing a better voltage margin than can be achieved with linear resistors     

Highly Efficient,Stable, and Ductile Ternary Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells from a Two‐Donor Polymer Blend

Organic solar cells (OSCs) are one of the most promising cost‐effective options for utilizing solar energy, and, while the field of OSCs has progressed rapidly in device performance in the past few years, the stability of nonfullerene OSCs has received less attention. Developing devices with both high performance and long‐term stability remains challenging, particularly if the material choice is restricted by roll‐to‐roll and benign solvent processing requirements and desirable mechanical durability. Building upon the ink (toluene:FTAZ:IT‐M) that broke the 10% benchmark when blade‐coated in air, a second donor material (PBDB‐T) is introduced to stabilize and enhance performance with power conversion efficiency over 13% while keeping toluene as the solvent. More importantly, the ternary OSCs exhibit excellent thermal stability and storage stability while retaining high ductility. The excellent performance and stability are mainly attributed to the inhibition of the crystallization of nonfullerene small‐molecular acceptors (SMAs) by introducing a stiff donor that also shows low miscibility with the nonfullerene SMA and a slightly higher highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) than the host polymer. The study indicates that improved stability and performance can be achieved in a synergistic way without significant embrittlement, which will accelerate the future development and application of nonfullerene OSCs.     

End-Group Engineering of Chlorine-Trialkylsiylthienyl Chain-Substituted Small-Molecule Donors for High-Efficiency Ternary Solar Cells

Ternary architecture has been widely demonstrated as a facile and efficient strategy to boost the performance of organic solar cells (OSCs). However, the rational design of the third component with suitable core and end-group modification is still a challenge. Herein, two new small-molecule (SM) donors BT-CN and BT-ER, featuring the identical conjugated backbone with distinct end group, have been designed, synthesized, and introduced into the PM6:Y6 binary system as the second donor. Both molecules exhibit complementary absorption and good miscibility with PM6, contributing to the nanofibrous phases and strong face-on molecular packing. Importantly, the incorporation of BT-CN/BT-ER has significantly facilitated charge collection and transportation with remarkable suppression of carrier recombination. As a result, ternary OSCs with 20 wt% BT-CN/BT-ER achieved a PCE of 16.8%/17.22% with synchronously increased open-circuit voltage (V_OC), short-circuit current density (J_SC) and fill factor (FF). Moreover, replacing Y6 with L8-BO further improves the PCE to 18.05%/18.11%, indicating the universality of both molecules as the third component. This work demonstrates not only two efficient SM donors with 4,8-bis(4-chloro-5-(tripropylsilyl)thiophen-2-yl) benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene (BDTT-SiCl) as the core but also end group modification strategy to fine-tune the absorption spectrum, molecular packing, and energy levels of SM donors to construct high-performance ternary OSCs.     

Effect of Conductance Variability on Resistor-Logic Demultiplexers for Nanoelectronics

On a mixed-scale nanoelectronic crossbar, in which nanowires cross CMOS-scale wires at right angles, a demultiplexer circuit may be laid out using configurable resistors at the crosspoint junctions. This circuit can function as an interface between conventional CMOS microelectronic circuitry and the smaller nanocircuitry by allowing a few CMOS address lines to control a much larger number of nanowires. The voltage margin properties of these resistor-demultiplexers can be improved by basing them on error-correcting codes. In any real fabrication process, the conductances of the resistors in the demultiplexer circuit will be distributed over a range of values. Using simulation, we investigate how variability in the conductances affects the voltages on the output lines of the demultiplexer, and the related voltage margin of the overall circuit. The simulation results provide a simple quantitative relationship revealing that the voltage variability is smaller than the component variability.     

Adder for metering electric energy and power

This article describes the capabilities of new adder SPE541, designed for the commercial metering of electric energy and power. The main specifications of the adder are discussed along with its advantages compared to adder SPE540. It is noted that all energy carriers at a given factory can be metered by using structurally similar instruments made by the company LOGIKA.Translated from Izmeritel'naya Tekhnika, No. 10, pp. 44–45, October, 1995.     

Ternary Polymer Solar Cells Facilitating Improved Efficiency and Stability

The use of a ternary active layer offers a promising approach to enhance the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of polymer solar cells (PSCs) via simply incorporating a third component. Here, a ternary PSC with improved efficiency and stability facilitated by a new small molecule IBC‐F is demonstrated. Even though the PBDB‐T:IBC‐F‐based device gives an extremely low PCE of only 0.21%, a remarkable PCE of 15.06% can be realized in the ternary device based on PBDB‐T:IE4F‐S:IBC‐F with 20% IBC‐F, which is ≈10% greater than that (PCE = 13.70%) of the control binary device based on PBDB‐T:IE4F‐S. The improvement in the device performance of the ternary PSC is mainly attributed to the enhancement of fill factor, which is due to the improved charge dissociation and extraction, suppressed bimolecular and trap‐assisted recombination, longer charge‐carrier lifetime, and enhanced intermolecular interactions for preferential face‐on orientation. Additionally, the ternary device with 20% IBC‐F shows better thermal and photoinduced stability over the control binary device. This work provides a new angle to develop the third components for building ternary PSCs with enhanced photovoltaic performance and stability for practical applications.     

Ternary Porous Cobalt Phosphoselenide Nanosheets: An Efficient Electrocatalyst for Electrocatalytic and Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting

Exploring efficient and earth‐abundant electrocatalysts is of great importance for electrocatalytic and photoelectrochemical hydrogen production. This study demonstrates a novel ternary electrocatalyst of porous cobalt phosphoselenide nanosheets prepared by a combined hydrogenation and phosphation strategy. Benefiting from the enhanced electric conductivity and large surface area, the ternary nanosheets supported on electrochemically exfoliated graphene electrodes exhibit excellent catalytic activity and durability toward hydrogen evolution in alkali, achieving current densities of 10 and 20 mA cm^?2 at overpotentials of 150 and 180 mV, respectively, outperforming those reported for transition metal dichalcogenides and first‐row transition metal pyrites catalysts. Theoretical calculations reveal that the synergistic effects of Se vacancies and subsequent P displacements of Se atoms around the vacancies in the resulting cobalt phosphoselenide favorably change the electronic structure of cobalt selenide, assuring a rapid charge transfer and optimal energy barrier of hydrogen desorption, and thus promoting the proton kinetics. The overall‐water‐splitting with 10 mA cm^?2 at a low voltage of 1.64 V is achieved using the ternary electrode as both the anode and cathode, and the performance surpasses that of the Ir/C–Pt/C couple for sufficiently high overpotentials. Moreover, the integration of ternary nanosheets with macroporous silicon enables highly efficient solar‐driven photoelectrochemical hydrogen production.     

Adder Designs and Analyses for Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata

Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is an emerging nanotechnology for electronic circuits. Its advantages such as faster speed, smaller size, and lower power consumption are very attractive. The fundamental device, a quantum-dot cell, can be used to make gates, wires, and memories. As such it is the basic building block of nanotechnology circuits. While the physical nature of the nanoscale materials is complicated, the circuit designer can concentrate on the logical and structural design, so the design effort is reduced. Because of its novelty, the current literature shows only simple circuit structures. So this paper broadens the QCA circuit designs with larger circuits and shows analyses based on those designs. This paper proposes three kinds of adder designs in QCA. Ripple carry adders, carry lookahead adders, and conditional sum adders are designed and simulated with several different operand sizes. The designs are compared according to complexity, area, and delay