No Arabic abstract
The full monolayer of pentacene adsorbed on rutile TiO$_2$(110) provides an intriguing model to study charge-transfer excitations where the optically excited electrons and holes reside on different sides of the internal interface between the pentacene monolayer and the TiO$_2$ surface. In this work we investigate the electronic properties of this system with density functional theory, and compute its excitonic and optical properties making use of emph{ab initio} matrix elements. The pentacene molecules are found to lie flat on the surface, head to tail, and slightly tilted towards the troughs of the oxygen rows of the surface --- in agreement with experiment. Molecular states appear in the band gap of the clean TiO$_2$ surface which enable charge transfer excitations directly from the molecular HOMO to the TiO$_2$ conduction band. The calculated optical spectrum shows a strong polarization dependence and displays excitonic resonances corresponding to the charge-transfer states. We characterize the computed excitons by their symmetry and location in k-space and use this information to explain the polarization dependence of the optical spectrum.
The integration of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide crystals (TMDCs) into a dielectric environment is critical for optoelectronic and photonic device applications. Here, we investigate the effects of direct deposition of different dielectric materials (Al$_2$O$_3$, SiO$_2$, SiN$_x$) onto atomically thin (monolayer) TMDC WS$_2$ on its optical response. Atomic layer deposition (ALD), electron beam evaporation (EBE), plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD), and magnetron sputtering methods of material deposition are investigated. The photoluminescence (PL) measurements reveal quenching of the excitonic emission after all deposition processes. The reduction in neutral exciton PL is linked to the increased level of charge doping and associated rise of the trion emission, and/or the localized (bound) exciton emission. Furthermore, Raman spectroscopy allows us to clearly correlate the observed changes of excitonic emission with the increased levels of lattice disorder and defects. Overall, the EBE process results in the lowest level of doping and defect densities and preserves the spectral weight of the exciton emission in the PL, as well as the exciton oscillator strength. Encapsulation with ALD appears to cause chemical changes, which makes it distinct from all other techniques. Sputtering is revealed as the most aggressive deposition method for WS$_2$, fully quenching its optical response. Our results demonstrate and quantify the effects of direct deposition of dielectric materials onto monolayer WS$_2$, which can provide a valuable guidance for the efforts to integrate monolayer TMDCs into functional optoelectronic devices.
We use first principles density functional theory to investigate the softening of polar phonon modes in rutile TiO$_2$ under tensile (110)-oriented strain. We show that the system becomes unstable against a ferroelectric distortion with polarization along (110) for experimentally accessible strain values. The resulting polarization, estimated from the Born effective charges, even exceeds the bulk polarization of BaTiO$_3$. Our calculations demonstrate the different strain dependence of polar modes polarized along (110) and (001) directions, and we discuss the possibility of strain engineering the polarization direction, and the resulting dielectric and piezoelectric response, in thin films of TiO$_2$ grown on suitable substrates.
The thermal deposition and transfer Printing method had been used to produce pentacene thin-films on SiO2/Si and plastic substrates (PMMA and PVP), respectively. X-ray diffraction patterns of pentacene thin films showed reflections associated with highly ordered polycrystalline films and a coexistence of two polymorph phases classified by their d-spacing, d(001): 14.4 and 15.4 A.The dependence of the c-axis correlation length and the phase fraction on the film thickness and printing temperature were measured. A transition from the 15.4 A phase towards 14.4 A phase was also observed with increasing film thickness. An increase in the c-axis correlation length of approximately 12% ~16% was observed for Pn films transfer printed onto a PMMA coated PET substrate at 100~120 C as compared to as-grown Pn films on SiO2/Si substrates. The transfer printing method is shown to be an attractive for the fabrication of pentacene thin-film transistors on flexible substrates partly because of the resulting improvement in the quality of the pentacene film.
The electronic structure of ZnPc, from sub-monolayers to thick films, on bare and iodated Pt(111) is studied by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Our results suggest that at low coverage ZnPc lies almost parallel to the Pt(111) substrate, in a non-planar configuration induced by Zn-Pt attraction, leading to an inhomogeneous charge distribution within the molecule and charge transfer to the molecule. ZnPc does not form a complete monolayer on the Pt surface, due to a surface-mediated intermolecular repulsion. At higher coverage ZnPc adopts a tilted geometry, due to a reduced molecule-substrate interaction. Our photoemission results illustrate that ZnPc is practically decoupled from Pt, already from the second layer. Pre-deposition of iodine on Pt hinders the Zn-Pt attraction, leading to a non-distorted first layer ZnPc in contact with Pt(111)-I $left(sqrt{3}timessqrt{3}right)$ or Pt(111)-I $left(sqrt{7}timessqrt{7}right)$, and a more homogeneous charge distribution and charge transfer at the interface. On increased ZnPc thickness iodine is dissolved in the organic film where it acts as an electron acceptor dopant.
Interfacial charge transfer is widely assumed to obey Butler-Volmer kinetics. For certain liquid-solid interfaces, Marcus-Hush-Chidsey theory is more accurate and predictive, but it has not been applied to porous electrodes. Here we report a simple method to extract the charge transfer rates in carbon-coated LiFePO4 porous electrodes from chronoamperometry experiments, obtaining curved Tafel plots that contradict the Butler-Volmer equation but fit the Marcus-Hush-Chidsey prediction over a range of temperatures. The fitted reorganization energy matches the Born solvation energy for electron transfer from carbon to the iron redox site. The kinetics are thus limited by electron transfer at the solid-solid (carbon-LixFePO4) interface, rather than by ion transfer at the liquid-solid interface, as previously assumed. The proposed experimental method generalizes Chidseys method for phase-transforming particles and porous electrodes, and the results show the need to incorporate Marcus kinetics in modeling batteries and other electrochemical systems.