Novel Riboflavin-Inspired Conjugated Bio-Organic Semiconductors.

Flavins are known to be extremely versatile, thus enabling routes to innumerable modifications in order to obtain desired properties. Thus, in the present paper, the group of bio-inspired conjugated materials based on the alloxazine core is synthetized using two efficient novel synthetic approaches providing relatively high reaction yields. The comprehensive characterization of the materials, in order to evaluate the properties and application potential, has shown that the modification of the initial alloxazine core with aromatic substituents allows fine tuning of the optical bandgap, position of electronic orbitals, absorption and emission properties. Interestingly, the compounds possess multichromophoric behavior, which is assumed to be the results of an intramolecular proton transfer.

Optical Properties of Titania Coatings Prepared by Inkjet Direct Patterning of a Reverse Micelles Sol-Gel Composition.

Thin layers of titanium dioxide were fabricated by direct inkjet patterning of a reverse micelles sol-gel composition onto soda-lime glass plates. Several series of variable thickness samples were produced by repeated overprinting and these were further calcined at different temperatures. The resulting layers were inspected by optical and scanning electronic microscopy and their optical properties were investigated by spectroscopic ellipsometry in the range of 200-1000 nm. Thus the influence of the calcination temperature on material as well as optical properties of the patterned micellar titania was studied. The additive nature of the deposition process was demonstrated by a linear dependence of total thickness on the number of printed layers without being significantly affected by the calcination temperature. The micellar imprints structure of the titania layer resulted into significant deviation of measured optical constants from the values reported for bulk titania. The introduction of a void layer into the ellipsometric model was found necessary for this particular type of titania and enabled correct ellipsometric determination of layer thickness, well matching the thickness values from mechanical profilometry.