Engineering Large-Area Antidust Surfaces by Harnessing Interparticle Forces.

Dust accumulation is detrimental to optical elements, electronic devices, and mechanical systems and is a significant problem in space missions and renewable energy deployment. In this paper, we report the demonstration of antidust nanostructured surfaces that can remove close to 98% of lunar particles solely via gravity. The dust mitigation is driven by a novel mechanism, whereby particle removal is facilitated by the formation of particle aggregates due to interparticle forces, allowing the particles to be removed in the presence of other particles. The structures are fabricated using a highly scalable nanocoining and nanoimprint process, where nanostructures with precise geometry and surface properties are patterned on polycarbonate substrates. The dust mitigation properties of the nanostructures have been characterized using optical metrology, electron microscopy, and image processing algorithms to demonstrate that the surfaces can be engineered to remove nearly all of the particles above 2 µm in size in the presence of Earth's gravity. Compared to the 35.0% area coverage on a smooth polycarbonate surface, the particle coverage on nanostructures with 500 nm period is significantly reduced to 2.4%, an improvement of 93%. This work enhances the understanding of the particulate adhesion on textured surfaces and demonstrates a scalable, effective solution to antidust surfaces that can be broadly applied to windows, solar panels, and electronics.

Roll-to-roll nanoimprint lithography using a seamless cylindrical mold nanopatterned with a high-speed mastering process.

The advanced optical and wetting properties of metamaterials, plasmonic structures, and nanostructured surfaces have been repeatedly demonstrated in lab-scale experiments. Extending these exciting discoveries to large-area surfaces can transform technologies ranging from solar energy and virtual reality to biosensors and anti-microbial surfaces. Although photolithography is ideal for nanopatterning of small, expensive items such as computer chips, nanopatterning of large-area surfaces is virtually impossible with traditional lithographic techniques due to their exceptionally slow patterning rates and high costs. This article presents a high-throughput process that achieves large-area nanopatterning by combining roll-to-roll (R2R) nanoimprint lithography (NIL) and nanocoining, a process that can seamlessly nanopattern around a cylinder hundreds of times faster than electron-beam lithography. Here, nanocoining is used to fabricate a cylindrical mold with nanofeatures spaced by 600 nm and microfeatures spaced by 2 µm. This cylindrical drum mold is then used on a R2R NIL setup to pattern over 60 feet of polymer film. Microscopy is used to compare the feature shapes throughout the process. This scalable process offers the potential to transfer exciting lab-scale demonstrations to industrial-scale manufacturing without the prohibitively high cost usually associated with the fabrication of a master mold.

Molecular packing and solar cell performance in blends of polymers with a bisadduct fullerene.

We compare the solar cell performance of several polymers with the conventional electron acceptor phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) to fullerenes with one to three indene adducts. We find that the multiadduct fullerenes with lower electron affinity improve the efficiency of the solar cells only when they do not intercalate between the polymer side chains. When they intercalate between the side chains, the multiadduct fullerenes substantially reduce solar cell photocurrent. We use X-ray diffraction to determine how the fullerenes are arranged within crystals of poly-(2,5-bis(3-tetradecylthiophen-2-yl)thieno[3,2-b]thiophene) (PBTTT) and suggest that poor electron transport in the molecularly mixed domains may account for the reduced solar cell performance of blends with fullerene intercalation.

Three-dimensional packing structure and electronic properties of biaxially oriented poly(2,5-bis(3-alkylthiophene-2-yl)thieno[3,2-b]thiophene) films.

We use a systematic approach that combines experimental X-ray diffraction (XRD) and computational modeling based on molecular mechanics and two-dimensional XRD simulations to develop a detailed model of the molecular-scale packing structure of poly(2,5-bis (3-tetradecylthiophene-2-yl)thieno[3,2-b]thiophene) (PBTTT-C(14)) films. Both uniaxially and biaxially aligned films are used in this comparison and lead to an improved understanding of the molecular-scale orientation and crystal structure. We then examine how individual polymer components (i.e., conjugated backbone and alkyl side chains) contribute to the complete diffraction pattern, and how modest changes to a particular component orientation (e.g., backbone or side-chain tilt) influence the diffraction pattern. The effects on the polymer crystal structure of varying the alkyl side-chain length from C(12) to C(14) and C(16) are also studied. The accurate determination of the three-dimensional polymer structure allows us to examine the PBTTT electronic band structure and intermolecular electronic couplings (transfer integrals) as a function of alkyl side-chain length. This combination of theoretical and experimental techniques proves to be an important tool to help establish the relationship between the structural and electronic properties of polymer thin films.

Tuning the properties of polymer bulk heterojunction solar cells by adjusting fullerene size to control intercalation.

We demonstrate that intercalation of fullerene derivatives between the side chains of conjugated polymers can be controlled by adjusting the fullerene size and compare the properties of intercalated and nonintercalated poly(2,5-bis(3-hexadecylthiophen-2-yl)thieno[3,2-b]thiophene (pBTTT):fullerene blends. The intercalated blends, which exhibit optimal solar-cell performance at 1:4 polymer:fullerene by weight, have better photoluminescence quenching and lower absorption than the nonintercalated blends, which optimize at 1:1. Understanding how intercalation affects performance will enable more effective design of polymer:fullerene solar cells.