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Polymers for Electronics and Energy Devices
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Polymers for Electronics and Energy Devices

A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 April 2024) | Viewed by 8814

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Di Huang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Railway Transportation, Hunan University of Technology, Zhuzhou 412008, China
Interests: organic solar cells; perovskite solar cells; machine learning
Dr. Jaemin Kong

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Physics, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju 52828, Republic of Korea
Interests: organic solar cells; perovskite solar cells; composite materials
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Juan Meng

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Physics, Guangxi Minzu University, Nanning 530006, China
Interests: solar cells; organic light-emitting diodes; interfaces

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to introduce our new Special Issue, entitled “Polymers for electronics and energy devices” to you.

Polymers, or so-called plastics, are used in many aspects of our daily lives; for instance, plastic bags, phone cases, electronic device housings, and exteriors of appliances, or even structural parts. This wide range of applicability stems from the intrinsic properties of polymers, such as light weight, flexibility, being easy-to-process, etc.

In addition to these properties, some polymers possess electrical conductivity, which are called conjugated polymers. These polymers are categorized as semiconductors since the polymers can  actually conduct electricity to a certain extent. Further, they behave like metals upon doping, so the doped polymers are classified as semi-metals in this particular case.

Thanks to their varied properties, polymers have been investigated for use in many applications, such as power conversions, displays, detectors, and other device components in academia and industry.

This Special Issue aims to gather studies and new findings in the field of polymers, with emphasis on applications in energy conversion, in the form of reports, research articles, and reviews.

Topics include, but are not limited to the keywords listed below.

Dr. Di Huang
Dr. Jaemin Kong
Dr. Juan Meng
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • polymers
  • perovskite
  • solar cells
  • photodetectors
  • light-emitting diodes
  • interface engineering
  • machine learning
  • computational simulations

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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16 pages, 2682 KiB  
Article
Providing a Photovoltaic Performance Enhancement Relationship from Binary to Ternary Polymer Solar Cells via Machine Learning
by Jingyue Cao and Zheng Xu
Polymers 2024, 16(11), 1496; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym16111496 - 24 May 2024
Viewed by 843
Abstract
Ternary polymer solar cells (PSCs) are currently the simplest and most efficient way to further improve the device performance in PSCs. To find high-performance organic photovoltaic materials, the established connection between the material structure and device performance before fabrication is of great significance. [...] Read more.
Ternary polymer solar cells (PSCs) are currently the simplest and most efficient way to further improve the device performance in PSCs. To find high-performance organic photovoltaic materials, the established connection between the material structure and device performance before fabrication is of great significance. Herein, firstly, a database of the photovoltaic performance in 874 experimental PSCs reported in the literature is established, and three different fingerprint expressions of a molecular structure are explored as input features; the results show that long fingerprints of 2D atom pairs can contain more effective information and improve the accuracy of the models. Through supervised learning, five machine learning (ML) models were trained to build a mapping of the photovoltaic performance improvement relationship from binary to ternary PSCs. The GBDT model had the best predictive ability and generalization. Eighteen key structural features from a non-fullerene acceptor and the third components that affect the device’s PCE were screened based on this model, including a nitrile group with lone-pair electron, a halogen atom, an oxygen atom, etc. Interestingly, the structural features for the enhanced device’s PCE were essentially increased by the Jsc or FF. More importantly, the reliability of the ML model was further verified by preparing the highly efficient PSCs. Taking the PM6:BTP-eC9:PY-IT ternary PSC as an example, the PCE prediction (18.03%) by the model was in good agreement with the experimental results (17.78%), the relative prediction error was 1.41%, and the relative error between all experimental results and predicted results was less than 5%. These results indicate that ML is a useful tool for exploring the photovoltaic performance improvement of PSCs and accelerating the design and application with highly efficient non-fullerene materials. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Polymers for Electronics and Energy Devices)
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9 pages, 2791 KiB  
Communication
Electrospun Poly L-Lactic Acid Nanofiber Webs Presenting Enhanced Piezoelectric Properties
by Seung Kwan Hong, Jae-Jin Lee, Kap Jin Kim and Suk-Won Choi
Polymers 2024, 16(3), 347; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym16030347 - 28 Jan 2024
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1461
Abstract
There has been extensive research on electrospun ferroelectric nanoparticle-doped poly L-lactic acid (PLA) nanofiber web piezoelectric devices. In this study, BaTiO3 nanoparticles (BTNPs) were incorporated into the PLA to enhance the piezoelectric properties. The composite nanofiber webs were characterized using field emission [...] Read more.
There has been extensive research on electrospun ferroelectric nanoparticle-doped poly L-lactic acid (PLA) nanofiber web piezoelectric devices. In this study, BaTiO3 nanoparticles (BTNPs) were incorporated into the PLA to enhance the piezoelectric properties. The composite nanofiber webs were characterized using field emission scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction. The piezoelectric behavior was analyzed by measuring the peak-to-peak output voltage (Vp-p) of the samples. The sensors fabricated from the PLA/BTNP nanofiber webs exhibited higher Vp-p values than the conventional electrospun PLA sensors. Furthermore, the corona-poled PLA/BTNP nanofiber web sensors exhibited even higher Vp-p values than the non-corona-poled sensors. Lastly, the effect of stacking nanofiber webs in terms of enhancing the sensor performance was also evaluated. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Polymers for Electronics and Energy Devices)
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14 pages, 3517 KiB  
Article
Probing the Effect of Photovoltaic Material on Voc in Ternary Polymer Solar Cells with Non-Fullerene Acceptors by Machine Learning
by Di Huang, Zhennan Li, Kuo Wang, Haixin Zhou, Xiaojie Zhao, Xinyu Peng, Rui Zhang, Jipeng Wu, Jiaojiao Liang and Ling Zhao
Polymers 2023, 15(13), 2954; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15132954 - 5 Jul 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1606
Abstract
The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of ternary polymer solar cells (PSCs) with non-fullerene has a phenomenal increase in recent years. However, improving the open circuit voltage (Voc) of ternary PSCs with non-fullerene still remains a challenge. Therefore, in this work, machine [...] Read more.
The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of ternary polymer solar cells (PSCs) with non-fullerene has a phenomenal increase in recent years. However, improving the open circuit voltage (Voc) of ternary PSCs with non-fullerene still remains a challenge. Therefore, in this work, machine learning (ML) algorithms are employed, including eXtreme gradient boosting, K-nearest neighbor and random forest, to quantitatively analyze the impact mechanism of Voc in ternary PSCs with the double acceptors from the two aspects of photovoltaic materials. In one aspect of photovoltaic materials, the doping concentration has the greatest impact on Voc in ternary PSCs. Furthermore, the addition of the third component affects the energy offset between the donor and acceptor for increasing Voc in ternary PSCs. More importantly, to obtain the maximum Voc in ternary PSCs with the double acceptors, the HOMO and LUMO energy levels of the third component should be around (−5.7 ± 0.1) eV and (−3.6 ± 0.1) eV, respectively. In the other aspect of molecular descriptors and molecular fingerprints in the third component of ternary PSCs with the double acceptors, the hydrogen bond strength and aromatic ring structure of the third component have high impact on the Voc of ternary PSCs. In partial dependence plot, it is clear that when the number of methyl groups is four and the number of carbonyl groups is two in the third component of acceptor, the Voc of ternary PSCs with the double acceptors can be maximized. All of these findings provide valuable insights into the development of materials with high Voc in ternary PSCs for saving time and cost. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Polymers for Electronics and Energy Devices)
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18 pages, 5050 KiB  
Article
Proposal and Numerical Analysis of Organic/Sb2Se3 All-Thin-Film Tandem Solar Cell
by Tarek I. Alanazi, Abdulaziz Alanazi, Ezzeddine Touti, Ahmed M. Agwa, Habib Kraiem, Mohana Alanazi, Abdulrahman M. Alanazi and Mona El Sabbagh
Polymers 2023, 15(11), 2578; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15112578 - 5 Jun 2023
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 1805
Abstract
The low bandgap antimony selenide (Sb2Se3) and wide bandgap organic solar cell (OSC) can be considered suitable bottom and top subcells for use in tandem solar cells. Some properties of these complementary candidates are their non-toxicity and cost-affordability. In [...] Read more.
The low bandgap antimony selenide (Sb2Se3) and wide bandgap organic solar cell (OSC) can be considered suitable bottom and top subcells for use in tandem solar cells. Some properties of these complementary candidates are their non-toxicity and cost-affordability. In this current simulation study, a two-terminal organic/Sb2Se3 thin-film tandem is proposed and designed through TCAD device simulations. To validate the device simulator platform, two solar cells were selected for tandem design, and their experimental data were chosen for calibrating the models and parameters utilized in the simulations. The initial OSC has an active blend layer, whose optical bandgap is 1.72 eV, while the initial Sb2Se3 cell has a bandgap energy of 1.23 eV. The structures of the initial standalone top and bottom cells are ITO/PEDOT:PSS/DR3TSBDT:PC71BM/PFN/Al, and FTO/CdS/Sb2Se3/Spiro-OMeTAD/Au, while the recorded efficiencies of these individual cells are about 9.45% and 7.89%, respectively. The selected OSC employs polymer-based carrier transport layers, specifically PEDOT:PSS, an inherently conductive polymer, as an HTL, and PFN, a semiconducting polymer, as an ETL. The simulation is performed on the connected initial cells for two cases. The first case is for inverted (p-i-n)/(p-i-n) cells and the second is for the conventional (n-i-p)/(n-i-p) configuration. Both tandems are investigated in terms of the most important layer materials and parameters. After designing the current matching condition, the tandem PCEs are boosted to 21.52% and 19.14% for the inverted and conventional tandem cells, respectively. All TCAD device simulations are made by employing the Atlas device simulator given an illumination of AM1.5G (100 mW/cm2). This present study can offer design principles and valuable suggestions for eco-friendly solar cells made entirely of thin films, which can achieve flexibility for prospective use in wearable electronics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Polymers for Electronics and Energy Devices)
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Review

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27 pages, 4896 KiB  
Review
Recent Progress in Printed Photonic Devices: A Brief Review of Materials, Devices, and Applications
by Amal M. Al-Amri
Polymers 2023, 15(15), 3234; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15153234 - 29 Jul 2023
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2460
Abstract
Printing electronics incorporates several significant technologies, such as semiconductor devices produced by various printing techniques on flexible substrates. With the growing interest in printed electronic devices, new technologies have been developed to make novel devices with inexpensive and large-area printing techniques. This review [...] Read more.
Printing electronics incorporates several significant technologies, such as semiconductor devices produced by various printing techniques on flexible substrates. With the growing interest in printed electronic devices, new technologies have been developed to make novel devices with inexpensive and large-area printing techniques. This review article focuses on the most recent developments in printed photonic devices. Photonics and optoelectronic systems may now be built utilizing materials with specific optical properties and 3D designs achieved through additive printing. Optical and architected materials that can be printed in their entirety are among the most promising future research topics, as are platforms for multi-material processing and printing technologies that can print enormous volumes at a high resolution while also maintaining a high throughput. Significant advances in innovative printable materials create new opportunities for functional devices to act efficiently, such as wearable sensors, integrated optoelectronics, and consumer electronics. This article provides an overview of printable materials, printing methods, and the uses of printed electronic devices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Polymers for Electronics and Energy Devices)
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