A new star-shaped oligoelectrolyte (TEFCOONa) with triphenylamine as the core, acetylene as linkage and anionic fluorenes as arms was obtained and used for direct imaging in living PANC-1 cells. Because of the hydrophobic conjugated groups of the oli-goelectrolyte, TEFCOONa can form nanospheres with an average diameter of^75 nm in 10 mmol/L PBS. These nanospheres possess a relatively high absolute quantum yield (16.5% in PBS), low cytotoxicity and can penetrate into the nucleus through the cytoplasm, which is essential for living cellular imaging. Collectively, these results validate our rational design of conjugated oligoelectrolyte and even hyper branched polymers-copolyelectrolyte as effective nanovectors for bioimaging and other clinical applications.
SONG WenLiJIANG RongCuiYUAN YanLU XiaoMeiHU WenBoFAN QuLiHUANG Wei
The effect of Au nanorods (NRs) on optical-to-electric conversion efficiency is investigated in inverted polymer solar cells, in which Au NRs are sandwiched between two layers of ZnO. Accompanied by the optimization of thickness of ZnO covered on Au NRs, a high-power conversion efficiency of 3.60% and an enhanced short-circuit current density (Jsc) of 10.87 mA/cm2 are achieved in the poly(3-hexylthiophene): [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT:PC60BM)- based inverted cell and the power conversion efficiency (PCE) is enhanced by 19.6% compared with the control device. The detailed analyses of the light absorption characteristics, the simulated scattering induced by Au NRs, and the electromag- netic field around Au NRs show that the absorption improvement in the photoactive layer due to the light scattering from the longitudinal axis and the near-field increase around Au NRs induced by localized surface plasmon resonance plays a key role in enhancing the performances.
Au nanoparticles (NPs) mixed with a majority of bone-like, rod, and cube shapes and a minority of irregu- lar spheres, which can generate a wide absorption spectrum of 400 nm-1000 nm and three localized surface plas- mon resonance peaks, respectively, at 525, 575, and 775 nrn, are introduced into the hole extraction layer poly(3,4- ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(4-styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) to improve optical-to-electrical conversion performances in polymer photovoltaic ceils. With the doping concentration of Au NPs optimized, the cell performance is significantly improved: the short-circuit current density and power conversion efficiency of the poly(3-hexylthiophene): [6,6]-phenyl- C60-butyric acid methyl ester cell are increased by 20.54% and 21.2%, reaching 11.15 mA.cm-2 and 4.23%. The variations of optical, electrical, and morphology with the incorporation of Au NPs in the cells are analyzed in detail, and our results demonstrate that the cell performance improvement can be attributed to a synergistic reaction, including: 1) both the local- ized surface plasmon resonanceand scattering-induced absorption enhancement of the active layer, 2) Au doping-induced hole transport/extraction ability enhancement, and 3) large interface roughness-induced efficient exciton dissociation and hole collection.