Transnational grandparenting in the digital age: mediated co-presence and childcare in the case of Romanian migrants in Switzerland and Canada.

Taking transnational families of Romanian migrants in Canada and Switzerland as a case in point, this paper accounts for the emergence of new patterns of "grandparenting" and "doing family" practices in the digital age, based on ICTs-mediated co-presence. It shows that migrants' parents are able to acquire manifold technological skills in order to cope with distance and separation and to improve the quality of their interaction and relationships with children and grandchildren living abroad. Ordinary co-presence routines within polymedia environments allow grandparents to take on their role as childcare providers across borders and develop new transnational lifestyles. Thus, despite contrasting feelings of well-being and distress that mediated co-presence generates, migrants' parents are able to place themselves as key actors within the transnational family in the digital society and invent new grandparenting practices.

A bicontinuous double gyroid hybrid solar cell.

We report the first successful application of an ordered bicontinuous gyroid semiconducting network in a hybrid bulk heterojunction solar cell. The freestanding gyroid network is fabricated by electrochemical deposition into the 10 nm wide voided channels of a self-assembled, selectively degradable block copolymer film. The highly ordered pore structure is ideal for uniform infiltration of an organic hole transporting material, and solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells only 400 nm thick exhibit up to 1.7% power conversion efficiency. This patterning technique can be readily extended to other promising heterojunction systems and is a major step toward realizing the full potential of self-assembly in the next generation of device technologies.

Block copolymer morphologies in dye-sensitized solar cells: probing the photovoltaic structure-function relation.

We integrate mesostructured titania arrays into dye-sensitized solar cells by replicating ordered, oriented one-dimensional (1D) columnar and three-dimensional (3D) bicontinuous gyroid block copolymer phases. The solar cell performance, charge transport, and recombination are investigated. We observe faster charge transport in 1D "wires" than through 3D gyroid arrays. However, owing to their structural instability, the surface area of the wire arrays is low, inhibiting the solar cell performance. The gyroid morphology, on the other hand, outperforms the current state-of-the-art mesoporous nanoparticle films.

Pattern formation by temperature-gradient driven film instabilities in laterally confined geometries.

Film break-up driven by an electric field or temperature gradient typically exhibit a characteristic length scale. The presence of a lateral confinement significantly alters this pattern formation process.