220GHz低噪声放大器研究

基于IHP锗硅BiCMOS工艺,研究和实现了两种220 GHz低噪声放大器电路,并将其应用于220 GHz太赫兹无线高速通信收发机电路。一种是220 GHz四级单端共基极低噪声放大电路,每级电路采用了共基极（Common Base, CB）电路结构,利用传输线和金属-绝缘体-金属(Metal-Insulator-Metal, MIM)电容等无源电路元器件构成输入、输出和级间匹配网络。该低噪放电源的电压为1.8 V,功耗为25 mW,在220 GHz频点处实现了16 dB的增益,3 dB带宽达到了27 GHz。另一种是220 GHz四级共射共基差分低噪声放大电路,每级都采用共射共基的电路结构,放大器利用微带传输线和MIM电容构成每级的负载、Marchand-Balun、输入、输出和级间匹配网络等。该低噪放电源的电压为3 V,功耗为234 mW,在224 GHz频点实现了22 dB的增益,3 dB带宽超过6 GHz。这两个低噪声放大器可应用于220 GHz太赫兹无线高速通信收发机电路。     

A new dithienosilole-based oligothiophene with methyldicyanovinyl groups for high performance solution-processed organic solar cells

A new linear dithienosilole-based oligothiophene end-capped with methyl and electron-withdrawing dicyanovinyl groups, DTS(Oct)₂-(2T-DCV-Me)₂, was prepared in good yield. This oligomer exhibited broad absorption spectra in bulk down to the near-IR region with the optical edge at 900 nm, resulting in an initially high power conversion efficiency of 5.44% in solution-processed organic solar cells using PC₇₁BM as an acceptor.     

Binary Cellulose Nanocrystal Blends for Bioinspired Damage Tolerant Photonic Films

Most attempts to emulate the mechanical properties of strong and tough natural composites using helicoidal films of wood‐derived cellulose nanocrystals (w‐CNCs) fall short in mechanical performance due to the limited shear transfer ability between the w‐CNCs. This shortcoming is ascribed to the small w‐CNC‐w‐CNC overlap lengths that lower the shear transfer efficiency. Herein, we present a simple strategy to fabricate superior helicoidal CNC films with mechanical properties that rival those of the best natural materials and are some of the best reported for photonic CNC materials thus far. Assembling the short w‐CNCs with a minority fraction of high aspect ratio CNCs derived from tunicates (t‐CNCs), we report remarkable simultaneous enhancement of all in‐plane mechanical properties and out‐of‐plane flexibility. The important role of t‐CNCs is revealed by coarse grained molecular dynamics simulations where the property enhancement are due to increased interaction lengths and the activation of additional toughening mechanisms. At t‐CNC contents greater than 5% by mass the mixed films also display UV reflecting behaviour. These damage tolerant optically active materials hold great promise for application as protective coatings. More broadly, we expect the strategy of using length‐bidispersity to be adaptable to mechanically enhancing other matrix‐free nanoparticle ensembles.     

Bimolecular Crystals of Fullerenes in Conjugated Polymers and the Implications of Molecular Mixing for Solar Cells

The performance of polymer:fullerene bulk heterojunction solar cells is heavily influenced by the interpenetrating nanostructure formed by the two semiconductors because the size of the phases, the nature of the interface, and molecular packing affect exciton dissociation, recombination, and charge transport. Here, X‐ray diffraction is used to demonstrate the formation of stable, well‐ordered bimolecular crystals of fullerene intercalated between the side‐chains of the semiconducting polymer poly(2,5‐bis(3‐tetradecylthiophen‐2‐yl)thieno[3,2‐b]thiophene. It is shown that fullerene intercalation is general and is likely to occur in blends with both amorphous and semicrystalline polymers when there is enough free volume between the side‐chains to accommodate the fullerene molecule. These findings offer explanations for why luminescence is completely quenched in crystals much larger than exciton diffusion lengths, how the hole mobility of poly(2‐methoxy‐5‐(3′,7′‐dimethyloxy)‐p‐phylene vinylene) increases by over 2 orders of magnitude when blended with fullerene derivatives, and why large‐scale phase separation occurs in some polymer:fullerene blend ratios while thermodynamically stable mixing on the molecular scale occurs for others. Furthermore, it is shown that intercalation of fullerenes between side chains mostly determines the optimum polymer:fullerene blending ratios. These discoveries suggest a method of intentionally designing bimolecular crystals and tuning their properties to create novel materials for photovoltaic and other applications.     

Organic Phenolic Configurationally Locked Polyene Single Crystals for Electro‐optic and Terahertz Wave Applications

We investigate a configurationally locked polyene (CLP) crystal 2‐(3‐(4‐hydroxystyryl)‐5,5‐dimethylcyclohex‐2‐enylidene)malononitrile (OH1) containing a phenolic electron donor, which also acts as a hydrogen bond donor. The OH1 crystals with orthorhombic space group Pna2₁ (point group mm2) exhibit large second‐order nonlinear optical figures of merit, high thermal stability and very favorable crystal growth characteristics. Higher solubility in methanol and a larger temperature difference between the melting temperature and the decomposition temperature of OH1 compared to analogous CLP crystals, are of advantage for solution and melt crystal growth, respectively. Acentric bulk OH1 crystals of large sizes with side lengths of up to 1 cm with excellent optical quality have been successfully grown from methanol solution. The microscopic and macroscopic nonlinearities of the OH1 crystals are investigated theoretically and experimentally. The OH1 crystals exhibit a large macroscopic nonlinearity with four times larger powder second harmonic generation efficiency than that of analogous CLP crystals containing dimethylamino electron donor. A very high potential of OH1 crystals for broadband THz wave emitters in the full frequency range of 0.1–3 THz by optical rectification of 160 fs pulses has been demonstrated.     

Diindenoperylene derivatives: A model to investigate the path from molecular structure via morphology to solar cell performance

Efficient organic electronic devices require a detailed understanding of the relation between molecular structure, thin film growth, and device performance, which is only partially understood at present. Here, we show that small changes in molecular structure of a donor absorber material lead to significant changes in the intermolecular arrangement within organic solar cells. For this purpose, phenyl rings and propyl side chains are fused to the diindenoperylene (DIP) molecule. Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction and variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry turned out to be a powerful combination to gain detailed information about the thin film growth. Planar and bulk heterojunction solar cells with C60 as acceptor and the DIP derivatives as donor are fabricated to investigate the influence of film morphology on the device performance. Due to its planar structure, DIP is found to be highly crystalline in pristine and DIP:C60 blend films while its derivatives grow liquid-like crystalline. This indicates that the molecular arrangement is strongly disturbed by the steric hindrance induced by the phenyl rings. The high fill factor (FF) of more than 75% in planar heterojunction solar cells of the DIP derivatives indicates excellent charge transport in the pristine liquid-like crystalline absorber layers. However, bulk heterojunctions of these materials surprisingly result in a low FF of only 54% caused by a weak phase separation and thus poor charge carrier percolation paths due to the lower ordered thin film growth. In contrast, crystalline DIP:C60 heterojunctions lead to high FF of up to 65% as the crystalline growth induces better percolation for the charge carriers. However, the major drawback of this crystalline growth mode is the nearly upright standing orientation of the DIP molecules in both pristine and blend films. This arrangement results in low absorption and thus a photocurrent which is significantly lower than in the DIP derivative devices, where the liquid-like crystalline growth leads to a more horizontal molecular alignment. Our results underline the complexity of the molecular structure-device performance relation in organic semiconductor devices.     

An Adaptable and Scalable Generator of Distributed Massive MIMO Baseband Processing Systems

Journal of Signal Processing Systems - This paper presents an algorithm-adaptable, scalable, and platform-portable generator for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) baseband processing...     

Molecular Dynamics Simulation of MBE Growth of CdTe/ZnTe/Si

We simulate in three dimensions molecular beam epitaxial (MBE) growth of CdTe/ZnTe/Si using classical molecular dynamics. Atomic interactions are simulated with Stillinger–Weber potentials, whose parameters are obtained by fitting to experimental data or density function theory-calculated distortion energies of the component crystals. The effects of substrate temperature and atomic species flux ratios on epilayer morphology are investigated. The agreement between simulations and experiments suggests that this model has reasonable ability to predict the microstructures of CdTe/ZnTe/Si grown by MBE.     

4D Printing at the Microscale

3D printing of adaptive and dynamic structures, also known as 4D printing, is one of the key challenges in contemporary materials science. The additional dimension refers to the ability of 3D printed structures to change their properties—for example, shape—over time in a controlled fashion as the result of external stimulation. Within the last years, significant efforts have been undertaken in the development of new responsive materials for printing at the macroscale. However, 4D printing at the microscale is still in its early stages. Thus, this progress report will focus on emerging materials for 4D printing at the microscale as well as their challenges and potential applications. Hydrogels and liquid crystalline and composite materials have been identified as the main classes of materials representing the state of the art of the growing field. For each type of material, the challenges and critical barriers in the material design and their performance in 4D microprinting are discussed. Importantly, further necessary strategies are proposed to overcome the limitations of the current approaches and move toward their application in fields such as biomedicine, microrobotics, or optics.