• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2014.02a
• /
• pp.134.2-134.2
• /
• 2014

Photonic crystal solar cells have the potential for addressing the disparate length scales in polymer photovoltaic materials, thereby confronting the major challenge in solar cell technology: efficiency. One must achieve simultaneously an efficient absorption of photons with effective carrier extraction. Unfortunately the two processes have opposing requirements. Efficient absorption of light calls for thicker PV active layers whereas carrier transport always benefits from thinner ones, and this dichotomy is at the heart of an efficiency/cost conundrum that has kept solar energy expensive relative to fossil fuels. This dichotomy persists over the entire solar spectrum but increasingly so near a semiconductor's band edge where absorption is weak. We report a 2-D, photonic crystal morphology that enhances the efficiency of organic photovoltaic cells relative to conventional planar cells. The morphology is developed by patterning an organic photoactive bulk heterojunction blend of Poly(3-(2-methyl-2-hexylcarboxylate) thiophene-co-thiophene) and PCBM via PRINT, a nano-embossing method that lends itself to large area fabrication of nanostructures. The photonic crystal cell morphology increases photocurrents generally, and particularly through the excitation of resonant modes near the band edge of the organic PV material. The device performance of the photonic crystal cell showed a nearly doubled increase in efficiency relative to conventional planar cell designs. Photonic crystals can also enhance performance of other optoelectronic devices including organic laser.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2008.10a
• /
• pp.883-886
• /
• 2008

In optical information technology, an electro-controllable Photonic Band Gap (PBG) in a photonic crystal (PC) material is potentially useful for the manipulation of light. Despite a great deal of research on PBGs, the reliable use of electro-active PBG material systems is restricted to only a few cases because of the complex and limiting nature of the structures involved. Here, we propose a PBG system that uses a liquid crystal (LC) polymer composite. The composite is made of nematic LCs (NLCs) embedded in polymeric helical networks of photo-polymerized cholesteric LCs (CLCs). The composite film shows a large field-induced reversible color shift over 150 nm of the reflection band, due to the reorientational undulation of the helical axis, similar to the Helfrich effect.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.40-43
• /
• 2009

The authors fabricated a nanopatterned surface on a GaN thin film deposited on a sapphire substrate and used that as an epitaxial wafer on which to grow an InGaN/GaN multi-quantum well structure with metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. The deposited GaN epitaxial surface has a two-dimensional photonic crystal structure with a hexagonal lattice of 230 nm. The grown structure on the nano-surface shows a Raman shift of the transverse optical phonon mode to $569.5\;cm^{-1}$, which implies a compressive stress of 0.5 GPa. However, the regrown thin film without the nano-surface shows a free standing mode of $567.6\;cm^{-1}$, implying no stress. The nanohole surface better preserves the strain energy for pseudo-morphic crystal growth than does a flat plane.

• Macromolecular Research
• /
• v.14 no.6
• /
• pp.603-609
• /
• 2006

Tricyanopyrrolidene chromophores were prepared in order to compare their macroscopic nonlinear optical (NLO) properties with a conjugated structure through the long molecular axis. A thiophene or phenyl ring was tethered to an ethylenic bond; it may act as a lateral moiety to disrupt the planarity of a chromophore and lessen the electrostatic interaction. Thin film composites of these chromophores dissolved in amorphous polycarbonate (APC) were fabricated. Real time pole and probe method was employed to investigate the change of electro-optic (EO) signal during poling. The EO properties and their relaxation behaviors of the guest-host systems containing newly synthesized chromophores were investigated in detail.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2010.08a
• /
• pp.281-281
• /
• 2010

Very low refractive index (<1.4) materials have been proved to be the key factor improving the performance of various optical components, such as reflectors, filters, photonic crystals, LEDs, and solar cell. Highly porous SiO2 are logically designed for ultralow refractive index materials because of the direct relation between porosity and index of refraction. Among them, ordered macroporous SiO2 is of potential material since their theoretically low refractive index ~1.10. However, in the conventional synthesis of ordered macroporous SiO2, the time required for the crystallization of organic nanoparticles, such as polystyrene (PS), from colloidal solution into well ordered template is typical long (several days for 1 cm substrate) due to the low interaction between particles and particle - substrate. In this study, polystyrene - polyacrylic acid (PS-AA) nanoparticles synthesized by miniemulsion polymerization method have hydrophilic polyacrylic acid tails on the surface of particles which increase the interaction between particle and with substrate giving rise to the formation of PS-AA film by simply spin - coating method. Less ordered with controlled thickness films of PS-AA on silicon wafer were successfully fabricated by changing the spinning speed or concentration of colloidal solution, as confirmed by FE-SEM. Based on these template films, a series of macroporous SiO2 films whose thicknesses varied from 300nm to ~1000nm were fabricated either by conventional sol - gel infiltration or gas phase deposition followed by thermal removal of organic template. Formations of SiO2 films consist of interconnected air balls with size ~100 nm were confirmed by FE-SEM and TEM. These highly porous SiO2 show very low refractive indices (<1.18) over a wide range of wavelength (from 200 to 1000nm) as shown by SE measurement. Refraction indices of SiO2 films at 633nm reported here are of ~1.10 which, to our best knowledge, are among the lowest values having been announced.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2003.11a
• /
• pp.132-132
• /
• 2003

Second-order nonlinear optical(NLO) materials have been extensively studied for applications in photonic devices, such as frequency doubling and electro-optical(EO) modulation, because of their large optical nonlinearity, excellent processibility, low dielectric constant, and high laser damage thresholds. The poling behaviour of NLO chromophore in organic/inorganic matrixes showed the randomization of poled NLO chromophore in the absence of poling Held. The liquid crystal molecules in a droplet showed a long-range orientational order along a director. Therefore, liquid crystal effects on poling behaviour of NLO chromophore dispersed in organically modified inorganic sol-gel materials were investigated. Using sol-gel process for the development of NLO material has received increasing attention, Organically modifked inorganic NLO sol-Eel materials are obtained via incorporation of the organic NLO active chromophore into an alkoxysilane based inorganic network. One of the most important thing in this works was that tetraethoxysilane(TEOS) and methyltrimathoxysilane(HTMS) were used as precursor followed by hydrolysis and condensation without using any acidic catalyst during the process. The NLO chromophores in the liquid crystal nanodomains were well mixed with I/O hybrid matrix, deposited on transparent ITO-coated glasses. The poling behaviour of liquid crystal effects of NLO chromophore dispersed in I/O hybrid matrix were investigated by UV-vis spectroscopy. Size distribution and morphology of the NLO chromophores doped in the liquid crystal nanodomains dispersed in I/O hybrid matrix were investigated by SEM.