Michael Pope has successfully defended his masters project entitled “Using resonant X-ray scattering to determine how structure controls the charge generation process in PCPDTBT:PC70BM solar cells.” Congratulations Michael!
The National Science Foundation has awarded a proposal lead by the Collins Group on the “Development of Environmental Control for Resonant X-ray Scattering on Organic Samples.” Co-PIs include Enrique Gomez of Penn State University and Harald Ade of NC State University. The new instrument will be constructed at the Advanced Light Source of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and will enable in-situ or in-operando studies of nanostructure in liquid and electrochemical environments with the sample fully exchangeable with existing transmission electron microscopes. For more information follow the link.
Michael Pope has given his first public science talk at the Electronic Materials Conference at the University of Delaware. The talk “In Pursuit of Reproducible Structure-Property Relationships in Organic Solar Cells” detailed in his first study of structure-property relationships in all-polymer organic solar cells using our One Sample method which involved in-situ dynamics measurement using time-resolve photoluminescence (TRPL), transient photovoltage (TPV), and time-delayed collection field (TDCF). The nanostructure of the devices themselves were then characterized at the Advanced Photon Source using resonant and traditional X-ray experiments.
Obaid Alqahtani has successfully defended his masters project and obtained his degree from the physics program at WSU. His project involved resonant X-ray reflectivity measurements on small molecule thin films and multilayers deposited via physical vapor deposition. He also lead our collaboration with the Pierre Beaujuge group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology on X-ray nanostructure investigations of their small-molecule-based organic solar cells. Obaid now returns to Saudi Arabia to teach university physics.
The Collins group has successfully published a manuscript with George Malliaras’ group at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines in Nature Communications. The work reveals how nanostructure can individually govern both ionic and electronic properties in the transparent and flexible polymer-based conductor known as PEDOT:PSS. Used in antistatic coatings, it also is biocompatible and has been shown to be of potential use in biointerfacing of electronic devices.
Qun Lu has successfully defended his masters project and obtained his degree from the physics program at WSU. His thesis “Separating annealing effects on organic solar cells based on combined solar simulator and quantum efficiency measurement” has established these state of the art fully automated in-situ measurements for our lab.
Thomas Ferron presented his first talk at the American Physical Society March Meeting in Baltimore, MD this past week along with a talk presented by Brian Collins. Thomas’ talk entitled “Spectral analysis of resonant scattering to quantify phase behavior in organic blends” was presented in the Focus Session: Polymers for Solar Energy Conversion on Wednesday morning.
Brian has been accepted into the Department of Chemistry as an affiliate faculty. The Collins Research Group can now involve students from physics, materials science, and chemistry.
A computational study probing how different morphologies can result in anisotropic scattering from isotropic films has been published in the Journal of Synchrotron Radiation entitled “Origins of polarization-dependent anisotropic X-ray scattering from organic thin films.” This work will enable definitive interpretations of X-ray scattering experiments on our films based on conjugated polymers toward quantitative measurements of molecular orientation within nanostructures.
Prof Collins has been invited to present “Resonant X-ray techniques revealing how nano-to-mesoscale structure in organic materials determines optoelectronic properties” at this year’s Pacific Northwest AVS Meeting at Mount Hood, Oregon on October 2nd.