Titanium Dioxide Nanomaterials: Synthesis, Properties, Modifications, and Applications

Spintronics, or spin electronics, involves the study of active control and manipulation of spin degrees of freedom in solid-state systems. This article reviews the current status of this subject, including both recent advances and well-established results. The primary focus is on the basic physical principles underlying the generation of carrier spin polarization, spin dynamics, and spin-polarized transport in semiconductors and metals. Spin transport differs from charge transport in that spin is a nonconserved quantity in solids due to spin-orbit and hyperfine coupling. The authors discuss in detail spin decoherence mechanisms in metals and semiconductors. Various theories of spin injection and spin-polarized transport are applied to hybrid structures relevant to spin-based devices and fundamental studies of materials properties. Experimental work is reviewed with the emphasis on projected applications, in which external electric and magnetic fields and illumination by light will be used to control spin and charge dynamics to create new functionalities not feasible or ineffective with conventional electronics.

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Spintronics: Fundamentals and applications

Organic solar cell research has developed during the past 30 years, but especially in the last decade it has attracted scientific and economic interest triggered by a rapid increase in power conversion efficiencies. This was achieved by the introduction of new materials, improved materials engineering, and more sophisticated device structures. Today, solar power conversion efficiencies in excess of 3% have been accomplished with several device concepts. Though efficiencies of these thin-film organicdevices have not yet reached those of their inorganic counterparts (η ≈ 10–20%); the perspective of cheap production (employing, e.g., roll-to-roll processes) drives the development of organic photovoltaic devices further in a dynamic way. The two competitive production techniques used today are either wet solution processing or dry thermal evaporation of the organic constituents. The field of organic solar cells profited well from the development of light-emitting diodes based on similar technologies, which have entered the market recently. We review here the current status of the field of organic solar cells and discuss different production technologies as well as study the important parameters to improve their performance.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0884291400094498

Organic solar cells: An overview

Functionalized acenes and heteroacenes for organic electronics.

Electron and ambipolar transport in organic field-effect transistors.

Room temperature spin polarized injection in organic semiconductor

Hole mobility in organic ultrathin film field-effect transistors is studied as a function of the coverage. For layered sexithienyl films, the charge carrier mobility rapidly increases with increasing coverage and saturates at a coverage of about two monolayers. This shows that the first two molecular layers next to the dielectric interface dominate the charge transport. A quantitative analysis of spatial correlations shows that the second layer is crucial, as it provides efficient percolation pathways for carriers generated in both the first and the second layers. The upper layers do not actively contribute either because their domains are smaller than the ones in the second layer or because the carrier density is negligible.

Spatially correlated charge transport in organic thin film transistors

We demonstrate a light-emitting organic field-effect transistor (OFET) with pronounced ambipolar current characteristics. The ambipolar transport layer is a coevaporated thin film of α-quinquethiophene (α-5T) as hole-transport material and N,N′-ditridecylperylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic diimide (P13) as electron-transport material. The light intensity is controlled by both the drain–source voltage VDS and the gate voltage VG. Moreover, the latter can be used to adjust the charge-carrier balance. The device structure serves as a model system for ambipolar light-emitting OFETs and demonstrates the general concept of adjusting electron and hole mobilities by coevaporation of two different organic semiconductors.

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Ambipolar light-emitting organic field-effect transistor

Today organic materials are routinely employed for the fabrication of light-emitting devices (OLEDs) and thin-film transistors (OTFTs), with the first technological realizations already having reached the market. Moreover, OTFTs with unipolar mobility values comparable to those of amorphous silicon (1 cm V s) have now been demonstrated. Applications impacting display technologies and those sectors where low cost is a key factor and low performance is acceptable include electronic paper and radio-frequency identification (RF-ID) products. In a recent development, OTFTs also exhibiting electroluminescence (EL) have been successfully demonstrated. Organic light-emitting transistors (OLETs) represent a significant technological advance by combining two functionalities, electrical switching and light emission, in a single device, thus significantly increasing the potential applications of organic semiconductors. In particular, if appropriate materials can be introduced, OLETs offer an ideal structure for improving the lifetime and efficiency of organic light-emitting heterostructures due to the intrinsically different driving conditions and charge-carrier balance compared to conventional OLEDs. Potential applications of OLETs include flat-panel display technologies, lighting, and, ultimately, easily fabricated organic lasers. The first OLET prototypes were unipolar transport devices, and recombination was expected to take place in close proximity to the metallic drain electrode where efficiency-depleting exciton quenching is also likely to occur. To avoid this significant device deficiency and to instead generate EL nearer the center of the channel, OLETs with ambipolar charge transport would be highly desirable. Furthermore, balanced ambipolar conduction is crucial for maximizing exciton recombination through efficient electron–hole balancing. Up to now various solutions have been proposed: single ambipolar materials and two-component coevaporated or layered structures. In coevaporated films, two materials are simultaneously sublimed to form bulk heterojunctions. However, carrier transport is unbalanced and the mobility values are below 10 cm V s. Devices employing a polymer film showing intrinsic ambipolar transport have also been reported but with mobility values for both charge carriers around 10 cm V s. In this paper we report OLETs based on two-component layered structures that have balanced ambipolar transport and mobility values as large as 3 × 10 cm V s. These devices are realized by sequentially depositing p-type (a,x-dihexyl-quaterthiophene, DH4T) and n-type films (N,N′-ditridecylperylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic diimide, PTCDIC13H27, P13). The combination with the highest mobility and most-balanced transport is obtained with DH4T grown in direct contact with the dielectric. For comparison, we have also employed pentacene in place of DH4T as the p-type material and showed that unbalanced ambipolarity is obtained. Morphological analysis of the outermost and buried layers, performed by laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM), allows selective imaging of materials with energetically separated photoluminescence (PL) spectra. Importantly, it is shown that ‘growth compatibility’ between the nand p-type materials is essential in forming a continuous interface and thereby controlling the resulting OLET optoelectronic-response properties. Each OLET material was first evaluated in a single layer in a top source–drain contact OTFT. As substrates we employed heavily doped silicon wafers with thermally grown oxides. Surface treatments such as octadecyltrichlorosilane or hexamethyldisilazane did not result in substantial improvement in the device performance. Parameters such as substrate temperature (Tsub) and evaporation rate were varied to optimize electrical characteristics. The optimum growth conditions were found to be: Tsub = 90 °C and rate = 0.1 A s –1 for DH4T, and Tsub = 25 °C and rate = 0.1 A s –1 for P13. In Table 1, the mobility (l) and threshold-voltage (Vth) values obtained are summarized. These are comparable to the highest values reported in the literature. The DH4T devices were stable even C O M M U N IC A TI O N S

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High‐Mobility Ambipolar Transport in Organic Light‐Emitting Transistors

An investigation into the stability of metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) transistors based on α-sexithiophene is reported. In particular, the kinetics of the threshold voltage shift upon application of a gate bias has been determined. The kinetics follow stretched-hyperbola-type behavior, in agreement with the formalism developed to explain metastability in amorphous-silicon thin-film transistors. Using this model, quantification of device stability is possible. Temperature-dependent measurements show that there are two processes involved in the threshold voltage shift, one occurring at T≈220 K and the other at T≈300 K. The latter process is found to be sample dependent. This suggests a relation between device stability and processing parameters.

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Mauro Murgia

Papers

Room temperature spin polarized injection in organic semiconductor

Spatially correlated charge transport in organic thin film transistors

Ambipolar light-emitting organic field-effect transistor

High‐Mobility Ambipolar Transport in Organic Light‐Emitting Transistors

Bias-induced threshold voltages shifts in thin-film organic transistors