Dithienocarbazole‐Based Ladder‐Type Heptacyclic Arenes with Silicon,Carbon, and Nitrogen Bridges: Synthesis,Molecular Properties,Field‐Effect Transistors,and Photovoltaic Applications

A new class of ladder‐type dithienosilolo‐carbazole ( DTSC ), dithienopyrrolo‐carbazole ( DTPC ), and dithienocyclopenta‐carbazole ( DTCC ) units is developed in which two outer thiophene subunits are covalently fastened to the central 2,7‐carbazole cores by silicon, nitrogen, and carbon bridges, respectively. The heptacyclic multifused monomers are polymerized with the benzothiadiazole ( BT ) acceptor by palladium‐catalyzed cross‐coupling to afford three alternating donor‐acceptor copolymers poly(dithienosilolo‐carbazole‐alt‐benzothiadiazole) ( PDTSCBT) , poly(dithienocyclopenta‐carbazole‐alt‐benzothiadiazole) ( PDTCCBT), and poly(dithienopyrrolo‐carbazole‐alt‐benzothiadiazole) ( PDTPCBT) . The silole units in DTSC possess electron‐accepting ability that lowers the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy levels of PDTSCBT , whereas stronger electron‐donating ability of the pyrrole moiety in DTPC increases the HOMO and LUMO energy levels of PDTPCBT . The optical bandgaps (E_g^opt) deduced from the absorption edges of thin film spectra are in the following order: PDTSCBT (1.83 eV) > PDTCCBT (1.64 eV) > PDTPCBT (1.50 eV). This result indicated that the donor strength of the heptacyclic arenes is in the order: DTPC > DTCC > DTSC . The devices based on PDTSCBT and PDTCCBT exhibited high hole mobilities of 0.073 and 0.110 cm² V^?1 s^?1, respectively, which are among the highest performance from the OFET devices based on the amorphous donor‐acceptor copolymers. The bulk heterojunction photovoltaic device using PDTSCBT as the p‐type material delivered a promising efficiency of 5.2% with an enhanced open circuit voltage, V_oc, of 0.82 V.     

Rear‐Passivated Ultrathin Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Films by Al2O3 Nanostructures Using Glancing Angle Deposition Toward Photovoltaic Devices with Enhanced Efficiency

In this work, for the first time, the addition of aluminum oxide nanostructures (Al₂O₃ NSs) grown by glancing angle deposition (GLAD) is investigated on an ultrathin Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ device (400 nm) fabricated using a sequential process, i.e., post‐selenization of the metallic precursor layer. The most striking observation to emerge from this study is the alleviation of phase separation after adding the Al₂O₃ NSs with improved Se diffusion into the non‐uniformed metallic precursor due to the surface roughness resulting from the Al₂O₃ NSs. In addition, the raised Na concentration at the rear surface can be attributed to the increased diffusion of Na ion facilitated by Al₂O₃ NSs. The coverage and thickness of the Al₂O₃ NSs significantly affects the cell performance because of an increase in shunt resistance associated with the formation of Na₂Se_X and phase separation. The passivation effect attributed to the Al₂O₃ NSs is well studied using the bias‐EQE measurement and J–V characteristics under dark and illuminated conditions. With the optimization of the Al₂O₃ NSs, the remarkable enhancement in the cell performance occurs, exhibiting a power conversion efficiency increase from 2.83% to 5.33%, demonstrating a promising method for improving ultrathin Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ devices, and providing significant opportunities for further applications.     

Characteristics of large‐scale nanohole arrays for thin‐silicon photovoltaics

Nanostructured crystalline silicon is promising for thin‐silicon photovoltaic devices because of reduced material usage and wafer quality constraint. This paper presents the optical and photovoltaic characteristics of silicon nanohole (SiNH) arrays fabricated using polystyrene nanosphere lithography and reactive‐ion etching (RIE) techniques for large‐area processes. A post‐RIE damage removal etching is subsequently introduced to mitigate the surface recombination issues and also suppress the surface reflection due to modifications in the nanohole sidewall profile, resulting in a 19% increase in the power conversion efficiency. We show that the damage removal etching treatment can effectively recover the carrier lifetime and dark current–voltage characteristics of SiNH solar cells to resemble the planar counterpart without RIE damages. Furthermore, the reflectance spectra exhibit broadband and omnidirectional anti‐reflective properties, where an AM1.5 G spectrum‐weighted reflectance achieves 4.7% for SiNH arrays. Finally, a three‐dimensional optical modeling has also been established to investigate the dimension and wafer thickness dependence of light absorption. We conclude that the SiNH arrays reveal great potential for efficient light harvesting in thin‐silicon photovoltaics with a 95% material reduction compared to a typical cell thickness of 200 µm. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Solution‐Processed High‐Performance Tetrathienothiophene‐Based Small Molecular Blends for Ambipolar Charge Transport

Four soluble dialkylated tetrathienoacene ( TTAR) ‐based small molecular semiconductors featuring the combination of a TTAR central core, π‐conjugated spacers comprising bithiophene ( bT ) or thiophene ( T ), and with/without cyanoacrylate ( CA ) end‐capping moieties are synthesized and characterized. The molecule DbT‐TTAR exhibits a promising hole mobility up to 0.36 cm² V^?1 s^?1 due to the enhanced crystallinity of the microribbon‐like films. Binary blends of the p‐type DbT‐TTAR and the n‐type dicyanomethylene substituted dithienothiophene‐quinoid ( DTTQ‐11 ) are investigated in terms of film morphology, microstructure, and organic field‐effect transistor (OFET) performance. The data indicate that as the DbT‐TTAR content in the blend film increases, the charge transport characteristics vary from unipolar (electron‐only) to ambipolar and then back to unipolar (hole‐only). With a 1:1 weight ratio of DbT‐TTAR DTTQ‐11 in the blend, well‐defined pathways for both charge carriers are achieved and resulted in ambipolar transport with high hole and electron mobilities of 0.83 and 0.37 cm² V^?1 s^?1, respectively. This study provides a viable way for tuning microstructure and charge carrier transport in small molecules and their blends to achieve high‐performance solution‐processable OFETs.     

Scheduled WiFi using distributed contention in WLANs: algorithms,experiments, and case-studies

The ubiquitous adoption of WiFi introduces large diversity in types of application requirements and topological characteristics. Consequently, considerable attention is being devoted to making WiFi networks controllable without compromising their scalability. However, the main MAC protocol of WiFi, distributed coordination function (DCF), is a contention-based protocol using random backoff. Thus, operating under DCF, the access of channel is hard to control and nonpredictable. In order to provide controllability of channel access in WiFi, we propose Rhythm, a MAC protocol that achieves scheduled WiFi efficiently using distributed contention. By achieving scheduled WiFi, channel access can be controlled by manipulating the schedule decision. We evaluate the performance of Rhythm through analysis, experiments, and case-studies.     

An improved technique and experimental results for the extractionof electron and hole mobilities in MOS accumulation layers

For the first time, experimental results are presented for electron and hole mobilities in the electron and hole accumulation layers of a MOSFET for a wide range of doping concentrations. Also presented is an improved methodology that has been developed in order to enable more accurate extraction of the accumulation layer mobility. The measured accumulation layer mobility for both electrons and holes is observed to follow a universal behavior at high transverse electric fields, similar to that observed for minority carriers in MOS inversion layers. At low to moderate transverse fields, the effective carrier mobility values are greater than the bulk mobility values for the highest doping levels. This is due to screening by accumulated carriers of the ionized impurity scattering by accumulated carriers, which dominates at higher doping concentrations. For lower doping levels, surface phonon scattering is dominant at low to moderate transverse fields so that the carrier mobility is below the bulk mobility value     

High-power broad-area InGaNAs/GaAs quantum-well lasers in the 1200 nm range

High-power broad-area InGaNAs/GaAs quantum-well (QW) edge-emitting lasers on GaAs substrates in the 1200 nm range are reported. The epitaxial layers of the InGaNAs/GaAs QW laser wafers were grown on n⁺-GaAs substrates by using metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The thickness of the InGaNAs/GaAs QW layers is 70 Å/1200 Å. The indium content (x) of the In_xGa_1−xN_yAs_1−y QW layers is estimated to be 0.35-0.36, while the nitrogen content (y) is estimated to be 0.006-0.009. More indium content (In) and nitrogen content (N) in the InGaNAs QW layer enables the laser emission up to 1300 nm range. The epitaxial layer quality, however, is limited by the strain in the grown layer. The devices were made with different ridge widths from 5 to 50 μm. A very low threshold current density (J_th) of 80 A/cm² has been obtained for the 50 μm × 500 μm LD. A number of InGaNAs/GaAs epi-wafers were made into broad-area LDs. A maximum output power of 95 mW was measured for the broad-area InGaNAs/GaAs QW LDs. The variations in the output powers of the broad-area LDs are mainly due to strain-induced defects the InGaNAs QW layers.     

Enhanced output power of near-ultraviolet InGaN-GaN LEDs grown on patterned sapphire substrates

Near-ultraviolet nitride-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with peak emission wavelengths around 410 nm were fabricated onto c-face patterned sapphire substrates (PSS). It was found that the electroluminescence intensity of the PSS LED shown 63% larger than that of the conventional LED. For a typical lamp-form PSS LED operating at a forward current of 20 mA, the output power and external quantum efficiency were estimated to be 10.4 mW and 14.1%, respectively. The improvement in the light intensity could be attributed to the decrease of threading dislocations and the increase of light extraction efficiency in the horizontal direction using a PSS.     

Unicast-based inference of network link delay distributions with finite mixture models

Providers of high quality-of-service over telecommunication networks require accurate methods for remote measurement of link-level performance. Recent research in network tomography has demonstrated that it is possible to estimate internal link characteristics, e.g., link delays and packet losses, using unicast probing schemes in which probes are exchanged between several pairs of sites in the network. We present a new method for estimation of internal link delay distributions using the end-to-end packet pair delay statistics gathered by back-to-back packet-pair unicast probes. Our method is based on a variant of the penalized maximum likelihood expectation-maximization (PML-EM) algorithm applied to an additive finite mixture model for the link delay probability density functions. The mixture model incorporates a combination of discrete and continuous components, and we use a minimum message length (MML) penalty for selection of model order. We present results of Matlab and ns-2 simulations to illustrate the promise of our network tomography algorithm for light cross-traffic scenarios.