No Arabic abstract
The separation of liquid mixture has been studied for a long time. Separation proceeds based on the difference in physical properties including pore size and electrostatic interaction. Therefore, there are many difficulties in separation of materials having similar size or polarities in physical properties such as ethanol-water and 1,4-dioxane-water mixtures. While we still lack a universal generalization of these ideas to the separation, pervaporation based on a difference in transport rates by permeability through a membrane by the permeate was early suggested. Yet there is an existing technical gap to remove trace amounts of organics dissolved in water. Here, we report a novel separation strategy employing a metamaterial, called meta-separation using the exotic structural property of metamateirals rather than electrostatic characteristics. The structural properties of metamaterials provide various functions of super-hydrophobicity based on roughness of surface, the strong capillary effect based on nanopore, and huge void for great absorption of organics. It exhibited a water contact angle of 151.3{deg} and high adhesive property from nanopore. On the other hands, ethanol was immediately absorbed up to 93 wt%. This differences made it possible to quickly and easily eliminate organics dissolved in water. Furthermore, their applications are expected to achieve functions in environmental remediation, biofuel separation process, etc., without large scale facilities.
We investigate the electronic dynamics of model organic photovoltaic (OPV) system consisting of polyphenylene vinylene (PPV) oligomers and [6,6]-phenyl C61-butyric acid methylester (PCBM) blend using a mixed molecular mechanics/quantum mechanics (MM/QM) approach. Using a heuristic model that connects energy gap fluctuations to the average electronic couplings and decoherence times, we provide an estimate of the state-to-state internal conversion rates within the manifold of the lowest few electronic excitations. We find that the lowest few excited states of a model interface are rapidly mixed by C=C bond fluctuations such that the system can sample both intermolecular charge-transfer and charge-separated electronic configurations on a time scale of 20fs. Our simulations support an emerging picture of carrier generation in OPV systems in which interfacial electronic states can rapidly decay into charge-separated and current producing states via coupling to vibronic degrees of freedom.
The ultrafast dynamics of photon-to-charge conversion in an organic light harvesting system is studied by femtosecond time-resolved X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (TR-XPS) at the free-electron laser FLASH. This novel experimental technique provides site-specific information about charge separation and enables the monitoring of free charge carrier generation dynamics on their natural timescale, here applied to the model donor-acceptor system CuPc:C$_{60}$. A previously unobserved channel for exciton dissociation into mobile charge carriers is identified, providing the first direct, real-time characterization of the timescale and efficiency of charge generation from low-energy charge-transfer states in an organic heterojunction. The findings give strong support to the emerging realization that charge separation even from energetically disfavored excitonic states is contributing significantly, indicating new options for light harvesting in organic heterojunctions.
We investigate the charge and lattice states in a quasi-one-dimensional organic ferroelectric material, TTF-QCl$_{4}$, under pressures of up to 35 kbar by nuclear quadrupole resonance experiments. The results reveal a global pressure-temperature phase diagram, which spans the electronic and ionic regimes of ferroelectric transitions, which have so far been studied separately, in a single material. The revealed phase diagram clearly shows that the charge-transfer instability and the lattice symmetry breaking, which coincide in the electronic ferroelectric regime at low pressures, bifurcate at a certain pressure, leading to the conventional ferroelectric regime. The present results reveal that the crossover from electronic to ionic ferroelectricity occurs through the separation of charge and lattice instabilities.
Polymorphism, which describes the occurrence of different lattice structures in a crystalline material, is a critical phenomenon in material science and condensed matter physics. It has emerged as a major focus for industry and regulatory agencies respectively. Thermomicroscopy, infrared spectroscopy and thermal analysis, especially differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is used to characterize polymorphism to provide a powerful to isolate and identify of crystalline modification. Enantiotropic and monotropic with reversible endothermic and irreversible exothermic phase transition is representative classifications of polymorphism. Recently, Dirac metamaterial based on pyrene derivatives is attracting great attention. It succeeded in forming a periodic and regular structure using the unique {pi}-{pi} interaction of the pyrene derivative, namely HYLION-12. The phase transition between modifications is not classified into the existing polymorphism system. Here, we propose a new kind of polymorphism by identifying and analyzing thermodynamic functions such as heat capacity, enthalpy, entropy and, Gibbs free energy between modifications from DSC. This not only allows us to better understand the formation of Dirac materials at the molecular level, but also to think about the condition for new types of polymorphism.
The origin of nematicity, i.e., in-plane rotational symmetry breaking, and in particular the relative role played by spontaneous unidirectional ordering of spin, orbital, or charge degrees of freedom, is a challenging issue of magnetism, unconventional superconductivity, and quantum Hall effect systems, discussed in the context of doped semiconductor systems, such as Ga$_{1-x}$Mn$_x$As, Cu$_x$Bi$_2$Se$_3$, and Ga(Al)As/Al$_x$Ga$_{1-x}$As quantum wells, respectively. Here, guided by our experimental and theoretical results for In$_{1-x}$Fe$_x$As, we demonstrate that spinodal phase separation at the growth surface (that has a lower symmetry than the bulk) can lead to a quenched nematic order of alloy components, which then governs low temperature magnetic and magnetotransport properties, in particular the magnetoresistance anisotropy whose theory for the $C_{2v}$ symmetry group is advanced here. These findings, together with earlier data for Ga$_{1-x}$Mn$_x$As, show under which conditions anisotropic chemical phase separation accounts for the magnitude of transition temperature to a collective phase or merely breaks its rotational symmetry. We address the question to what extent the directional distribution of impurities or alloy components setting in during the growth may account for the observed nematicity in other classes of correlated systems.