South China University of Technology

About: South China University of Technology is a education organization based out in Guangzhou, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Catalysis & Adsorption. The organization has 62343 authors who have published 69468 publications receiving 1251592 citations. The organization is also known as: SCUT & Huánán Lǐgōng Dàxué.

Aggregation-Induced Emission: The Whole Is More Brilliant than the Parts

Abstract: "United we stand, divided we fall."--Aesop. Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) refers to a photophysical phenomenon shown by a group of luminogenic materials that are non-emissive when they are dissolved in good solvents as molecules but become highly luminescent when they are clustered in poor solvents or solid state as aggregates. In this Review we summarize the recent progresses made in the area of AIE research. We conduct mechanistic analyses of the AIE processes, unify the restriction of intramolecular motions (RIM) as the main cause for the AIE effects, and derive RIM-based molecular engineering strategies for the design of new AIE luminogens (AIEgens). Typical examples of the newly developed AIEgens and their high-tech applications as optoelectronic materials, chemical sensors and biomedical probes are presented and discussed.

Organic and solution-processed tandem solar cells with 17.3% efficiency

Abstract: Although organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells have many advantages, their performance still lags far behind that of other photovoltaic platforms. A fundamental reason for their low performance is the low charge mobility of organic materials, leading to a limit on the active-layer thickness and efficient light absorption. In this work, guided by a semi-empirical model analysis and using the tandem cell strategy to overcome such issues, and taking advantage of the high diversity and easily tunable band structure of organic materials, a record and certified 17.29% power conversion efficiency for a two-terminal monolithic solution-processed tandem OPV is achieved.

Simultaneous Enhancement of Open-Circuit Voltage, Short-Circuit Current Density, and Fill Factor in Polymer Solar Cells

Abstract: Simultaneous enhancement of open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current density, and fill factor in highly efficient polymer solar cells by incorporating an alcohol/water-soluble conjugated polymer as cathode interlayer is domonstrated. When combined with a low-bandgap polymer PTB7 as the electron donor material, the power efficiency of the devices is improved to a certified 8.370%. Due to the drastic improvement in efficiency and easy utilization, this method opens new opportunities for PSCs from various material systems to improve towards 10% efficiency.

DehazeNet: An End-to-End System for Single Image Haze Removal

Abstract: Single image haze removal is a challenging ill-posed problem. Existing methods use various constraints/priors to get plausible dehazing solutions. The key to achieve haze removal is to estimate a medium transmission map for an input hazy image. In this paper, we propose a trainable end-to-end system called DehazeNet, for medium transmission estimation. DehazeNet takes a hazy image as input, and outputs its medium transmission map that is subsequently used to recover a haze-free image via atmospheric scattering model. DehazeNet adopts convolutional neural network-based deep architecture, whose layers are specially designed to embody the established assumptions/priors in image dehazing. Specifically, the layers of Maxout units are used for feature extraction, which can generate almost all haze-relevant features. We also propose a novel nonlinear activation function in DehazeNet, called bilateral rectified linear unit, which is able to improve the quality of recovered haze-free image. We establish connections between the components of the proposed DehazeNet and those used in existing methods. Experiments on benchmark images show that DehazeNet achieves superior performance over existing methods, yet keeps efficient and easy to use.