Photo-Sintered Silver Thin Films by a High-Power UV-LED Module for Flexible Electronic Applications.

In recent printed electronics technology, a photo-sintering technique using intense pulsed light (IPL) source has attracted attention, instead of conventional a thermal sintering process with long time and high temperature. The key principle of the photo-sintering process is the selective heating of a thin film with large light absorption coefficients, while a transparent substrate does not heat by the IPL source. Most research on photo-sintering has used a xenon flash lamp as a light source. However, the xenon flash lamp requires instantaneous high power and is unsuitable for large area applications. In this work, we developed a new photo-sintering system using a high-power ultraviolet light emitting diode (UV-LED) module. A LED light source has many merits such as low power consumption and potential large-scale application. The silver nanoparticles ink was inkjet-printed on a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and photo-sintered by the UV-LED module with the wavelength of 365 and 385 nm. The electrical resistivity as low as 5.44 × 10-6 Ω·cm (just about three times compared to value of bulk silver) was achieved at optimized photo-sintering conditions (wavelength of 365 nm and light intensity of 300 mW/cm2).

In Situ Ultraviolet Polymerization Using Upconversion Nanoparticles: Nanocomposite Structures Patterned by Near Infrared Light.

In this paper, we report an approach to polymerization of a nanocomposite containing UV-polymerizable organic material and inorganic, NaYbF4:Tm3+ core-based nanoparticles (NPs), which are optimized for upconversion of near infrared (NIR) to ultraviolet (UV) and blue light. Our approach is compatible with numerous existing UV-polymerizable compositions and the NaYF4: Yb, Tm3+ core-based NPs are much more stable against harsh conditions than NIR organic photo-initiators proposed earlier. The use of a core-shell design for the NPs can provide a suitable method for binding with organic constituents of the nanocomposite, while maintaining efficient NIR-to-UV/blue conversion in the NaYbF4 core. The prepared photopolymerized transparent polymer nanocomposites display upconversion photoluminescence in UV, visible and NIR ranges. We also demonstrate a successful fabrication of polymerized nanocomposite structure with millimeter/submillimeter size uniformly patterned by 980 nm irradiation of inexpensive laser diode through a photomask.

Improvement in Power of Shingled Solar Cells for Photo-Voltaic Module.

This paper presents a study on the effects of heat treatment conditions on electrically conductive adhesives. Among the advantages of the shingled solar cells include larger active area and smaller current density since one of the main factors of the power loss is due to a decrease in current density. Therefore, when there is a small current, there is a benefit in regards to the power loss. The advantage of this new technique of developing photovoltaic modules is the increase of module power using the same installed area. Electrically conductive adhesives play an important role in the manufacture of shingled solar cells and understanding the effects of its curing condition is necessary to maximize its output power. Through changing the curing time and temperature, the optimized curing conditions for electrically conductive adhesives and fabricated shingled strings for development of a module could be established. Finally, we demonstrated a 500 mm × 500 mm photovoltaic module with a conventional and the other using the shingled method for purposes of comparison and a shingled module showed about 29% increase in maximum output power compared to a conventional module with the same installed area.

Electrically Conductive Adhesives and the Shingled Array Cell for High Density Modules.

The shingled array of solar cells has the advantages of a larger active area and smaller current density than conventional solar cells. Because the power loss is mainly driven by the decrease in current density, this new method has the benefit of increasing module power with the same installed area as used in other methods. As the electrically conductive adhesive (ECA), CA3556HF was chosen and characterized by analysis of reflectance and sheet resistance. These analyzed data show consistent and relevant results for the cell efficiency of separated and serially connected cells fabricated by means of the shingled array method. We successfully demonstrated the increase of the high density module (HDM) power by 5.1% for a 30 cm×30 cm area and the fill factor also increased by 2% compared with conventional modules.

Manipulating nanoscale interactions in a polymer nanocomposite for chiral control of linear and nonlinear optical functions.

The design, synthesis, and supramolecular organization of a nanocomposite in which nanoscale excitonic interactions between quantum dots and the chiral polymer dramatically enhance the optical activity is reported. This material is highly suitable for application in the emerging field of chiral photonics.

Coupled plasmons induce broadband circular dichroism in patternable films of silver nanoparticles with chiral ligands.

This contribution reports the chiro-optic response of as-cast and photopatterned films of silver nanoparticles capped with photothermally-cleavable chiral ligands. We demonstrate broadband circular dichroism in these nanoparticle films, which is not present in dispersions of the nanoparticles capped with the chiral ligands. Long wavelength circular dichroism is derived from coupling of the plasmonic bands of neighbouring silver nanoparticles. Furthermore, the chiral response is preserved in the microstructured film after photopatterning using direct two-photon absorption in the plasmonic band of the silver nanoparticles. Thus, both the as-cast and photopatterned films show circular dichroism from the UV wavelength of intrinsic absorption of the ligand, through the plasmon resonances of both the isolated silver nanoparticles and the interacting nanoparticles, which extend to the near IR. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations of model electronic complexes of a chiral ligand and a small metallic cluster suggest that the new chiral bands at the plasmonic resonances are derived from new chiral hybrid electronic states of the metal nanoparticle-ligand complexes.

Chiral poly(fluorene-alt-benzothiadiazole) (PFBT) and nanocomposites with gold nanoparticles: plasmonically and structurally enhanced chirality.

Materials with large chiral optical activity at visible wavelengths are of great interest in photonics, particularly as a route to chiral optical metamaterials. Here, we demonstrate the plasmonic enhancement of the chiral optical activity of chiral poly(fluorene-alt-benzothiadiazole) (PFBT) doped with gold nanoparticles. The supramolecular helical organization of polymeric chains with simultaneous dipole-dipole interaction of the helically ordered nanoparticles with the polymer and one another results in unprecedented values of chirality parameter (κ ~0.02) at visible wavelengths in thin films.

Large-area, near-infrared (IR) photonic crystals with colloidal gold nanoparticles embedding.

A polymeric composite material composed of colloidal gold nanoparticles (<10 nm) and SU8 has been utilized for the fabrication of large-area, high-definition photonic crystal. We have successfully fabricated near-infrared photonic crystal slabs from composite materials using a combination of multiple beam interference lithography and reactive ion etching processes. Doping of colloidal gold nanoparticles into the SU8 photopolymer results in a better definition of structural features and hence in the enhancement of the optical properties of the fabricated photonic crystals. A 2D air hole array of triangular symmetry with a hole-to-hole pitch of approximately 500 nm has been successfully fabricated in a large circular area of 1 cm diameter. Resonant features observed in reflectance spectra of our slabs are found to depend on the exposure time, and can be tuned over a range of near-infrared frequencies.