There are many articles on the ITIC system in the field of organic photovoltaics, and Wei Xingsi’s research team reported on ITIC for the first time, so many articles have been sent to him. Xu Qiu reviews more than four or five articles every month. .
An NC article just published by Xu Zhenghong's group, Xu Qiuzang had already seen it as early as two months ago when he was reviewing the manuscript.
They reported that a non-fullerene acceptor material called DBC-IC, combined with a PBDB-T donor material, has a device efficiency of 10.3%.
The molecular structure of DBC-IC is somewhat similar to ITIC and is also an ADA structure.
However, its central D unit is not a traditional large π-conjugated fused ring structure based on sp2 hybridized carbon-carbon double bonds, but a non-conjugated structure with sp3 hybridized carbon-carbon single bonds.
At that time, Xu Qiu felt that the work Xu Zhenghong and others did was quite interesting. They did not blindly follow the ITIC structure. Although they were not very efficient, they still gave them a chance to give them opinions on major changes.
The main purpose is to let them supplement some experimental data on device stability, and to dig deeper into the possible similarities and differences between non-conjugated systems and conjugated systems.
Now Xu Zhenghong and the others officially published the NC article, which already contains the two opinions mentioned by Xu Qiu.
On the one hand, they compared the stability of the three systems of DBP-IC, ITIC, and PCBM, and found that the device stability of DBC-IC was slightly better, followed by ITIC, and PCBM was the worst, especially the stability under continuous light.
DBC-IC can maintain an initial device efficiency of more than 60% under long-term light conditions, such as 1500 hours. Under the same conditions, the efficiency of the ITIC system has decayed to about 50%. The device efficiency of the PCBM system is about 200. When the light lasts for an hour, it has decayed to 0%.
On the other hand, through DFT simulations, they found that although there are carbon-carbon single bonds in the central D unit of DBP-IC, the molecular configuration can be rotated to a certain extent, but limited by factors such as steric hindrance, the amplitude of rotation is not It will be big.
In other words, although DBP-IC is nominally a non-conjugated structure, in fact it still has strong conjugate properties and is not strictly a non-conjugated structure.
Xu Zhenghong and their supplementary experiments concluded that they were almost the same as Xu Qiu expected.
The reason why organic photovoltaic materials can achieve photoelectric conversion is because of the large π-conjugated structure in the photoelectric materials.
This conjugated structure can be excited by light energy to become an excited state, generating excitons, and the charge after the splitting of the excitons will be transported along the inside of the molecule or the conjugated structure between molecules.
There is a problem here, that is, the process of absorbing light energy by this conjugated structure is actually equivalent to a chemical reaction.
Under normal circumstances, this chemical reaction is reversible, that is, when the light stops, the material will return to its original state.
However, there is also a certain probability that the conjugated structure cannot be restored. For example, the carbon-carbon double bond in the material molecule is opened, which is equivalent to the formation of a defect in the material.
Once the defect is formed, it will affect the generation and transport of excitons, and then cause the loss of photocurrent. The result is low device efficiency.
Therefore, for organic photovoltaic materials, it is a relatively contradictory existence in itself. The conjugated structure gives organic photovoltaic materials the ability to convert light energy into electrical energy, but at the same time, it also bears the "curse of instability of molecular structure under light." ".
Generally speaking, Xu Zhenghong's work is quite enlightening. Afterwards, Xu Qiu may also seek a balance between conjugate and non-conjugate, taking into account the efficiency and stability of the device.
Of course, this is a relatively late matter, and the main task at this stage is to impact efficiency.
In addition, there is also an interesting article published on AM, which is the work of the Hong Kong University Yanhu Research Group.
Speaking of it, the two research groups Wei Xingsi and Yan Hu still have a lot of "origins":
Previously, Xu Qiu rushed to publish PCE11 work in front of Yan Hu and others, which caused Yan Hu's JACS article to die;
Later, Yan Hu and the others developed a material called ITIC2, which has the same molecular structure as the ITIC-Th designed by Xu Qiu, and published it first.
There are also contacts between the two research groups.
However, the job of ITIC-Th was robbed, and to Xu Qiu and Han Jiaying, it was basically irrelevant. At the time, they had a headache and had too much work in their hands, and Yan Hu just helped to "lighten the burden".
Yan Hu's PCE11 job was robbed, and it was a bit hurt. After all, that job was Xu Qiu's first Grand Slam article, and the number of citations for this article is expected to exceed 100 in the future, which can be regarded as a masterpiece.
Now Yan Hu's AM article is aimed at the improvement of PCE11 materials.
Perhaps for some reason, Yan Hu did not call the body of this material PCE11, but named it according to their own naming method, which is PBTff4T-2OD.
The main purpose of the improvement is to match the PCE11 donor material with the ITIC2 non-fullerene acceptor material they developed.
The original PCE11 was designed for the fullerene system, so it is a material with a narrow band gap and high crystallinity, which is not compatible with the ITIC2 material.
What we need to do now is to increase the forbidden band width while reducing the crystallinity of its molecules.
The method used by Yan Hu is to insert a difluoro-substituted benzene ring (B) into PCE11, that is, to change the molecular structure of the main chain of the donor material from "-T-BT-TTT-" to "-T- BT-TBTT-".
Based on this idea, they developed two new materials, named PTFB-O and PTFB-P, respectively. The two fluorine atoms inserted in the benzene ring of the former are ortho-substituted and the latter are para-substituted.
The results show that the band gap of the two donor materials has been successfully pulled up to about 1.8 electron volts, forming complementary light absorption with ITIC2 and matching energy levels.
However, the performance of battery devices based on PTFB-O and PTFB-P are very different.
PTFB-O: ITIC2 system, the efficiency can reach 11.3%, while PTFB-P: ITIC2 system efficiency is only 6.89%.
In order to explain this phenomenon, Yan Hu and his colleagues conducted analysis methods such as light source GIWAXS and DFT simulation.
Similar to Xu Zhenghong's NC article, Yan Hu and others believe that it is also the reason for the molecular configuration.
In the stable configuration of PTFB-O, the side chains on the two thiophene units with side chains are located on the same side, that is, a structure similar to a "U" shape is formed. The degree of regularity of this molecular structure is not high, and the material The crystallinity of the product is therefore suppressed.
In the stable configuration of PTFB-P, the side chains on the two thiophene units with side chains are located on different sides, and finally form a structure similar to a "one" shape. This molecular structure has a high degree of regularity. Its crystallinity is comparable to PCE11, which is a highly crystalline donor material.
Their overall storyline is roughly the fine adjustment of the molecular structure, which changes the molecular configuration, which in turn changes the degree of crystallinity of the material, which affects the morphology of the receptor blend, and ultimately leads to differences in device performance.
This conclusion of Yan Hu still has a certain degree of versatility in the non-fullerene receptors of the ITIC series and even the IDTBR series. That is, these non-fullerene receptor materials prefer donor materials with less crystallinity.
Including the previous school sister’s system, the choice is the traditional PCE10;
Xu Zhenghong's IDTBR system uses PCE10 and PCE11 at the same time, and the performance of the former is better.
Except for the three articles by Ma Weiwei, Xu Zhenghong, and Yan Hu, the other work is not very noteworthy. After reading it, Xu Qiu has not gained much.
Now many research groups have also begun to synthesize ITIC-like non-fullerene acceptor materials based on ICIN end groups, with good performance, high novelty, or good stories, and the articles will be better published. On the contrary, the articles will be better. Worse.
Considering the current popularity of ITIC, Xu Qiu went to the wos website to check his own ITIC AM article, and found that the identification of hot articles and highly cited articles still exists.
And now the number of real-time citations has exceeded 100 times, reaching a staggering 117 times.
Excluding the more than 20 self-citations by my research group, in just a few months, the number of citations for the article has been close to 100, which is still very strong.
This work has a high probability of becoming a thousand-time cited article, but it is estimated that it will take a few years. After all, the plate in the field of organic photovoltaics is a bit small, and the popularity is not high.
If it is placed in a hot field such as graphene and achieved academic results equivalent to "developing ITIC materials", it is estimated that it will reach a thousand citations within two years.
In fact, from a utilitarian point of view, Xu Qiu's switch to application-oriented fields such as lithium batteries, or a popular scientific research field such as graphene, is more "money" or promising than organic photovoltaics.
However, he chose to stick to the organic photovoltaic field for the time being.
On the one hand, he is still a student after all, and his transfer will be subject to many restrictions.
On the other hand, he has a lot of accumulation in the field of organic photovoltaics and has now become a small group of people in the forefront.
If you change the domain, you need to give up all this and start over.
Instead of this, it is better to achieve the ultimate in this field, and then consider other things.
Although the unpopular areas are relatively difficult, it is impossible to counterattack.
On Friday morning, Xu Qiu just walked out of the bedroom door and was about to go to work early with Han Jiaying, when he received a call from Wei Xingsi.
Wei Xingsi said straightforwardly: "I just received the email, and the article on "Nature·Energy" was officially accepted!"
Xu Qiu calmly responded: "Okay." Of course, his heart is actually a little excited.
Although I thought there was no problem with this "Nature·Energy" article before, it was not officially accepted, and I was always worried about what would happen. Now the dust has finally settled.
The publication of this "Nature·Energy" not only made Xu Qiu break through his own limits, but also took Wei Xingsi to cross the AM and EES grades, reaching the level of the orthodox "Nature" Dazi magazine.
At this stage, the real-time impact factor of "Nature·Energy" has reached around 42, and even surpassed the main issue of "Nature" with an impact factor of around 38.
From the perspective of influence and attention, although there is a gap between the major journal of Nature and the main journal of Nature, the gap is actually not that big.
After all, the original intention of the publication of "Nature" is that there are more and more subdivided fields in the scientific research circle, and more and more scientific researchers, and the main journal of "Nature" can only contain about 1,000 articles per year. High-end and groundbreaking articles were classified and transferred to the corresponding "Nature" sub-journals only because the research field was relatively unpopular.
In other words, "Nature" was born to solve the "contradiction between the increasing number of high-end scientific research work and the limited number of articles included in the CNS".
An approximate analogy can be made in the field of web texts.
Starting point male frequency includes urban, fantasy, fantasy, fairy, science fiction, martial arts, military, reality, history, sports, suspense, light novel, sports, games and other categories.
Among them, urban, fantasy, etc. belong to the more popular categories, while suspense, reality, and military are relatively unpopular categories.
The top ten of the monthly ticket list is equivalent to publishing "Nature", and the top ten of each category monthly ticket list is equivalent to publishing a "Nature" sub-journal.
The top ten of the monthly ticket list under the popular category is not much worse than the top ten of the total monthly ticket list, which corresponds to the big magazine of "Nature".
The top ten monthly ticket lists under the unpopular category may be far from the top ten in the total monthly ticket list, which corresponds to the ordinary sub-issues of "Nature".
Of course, this is only an approximate analogy, because an article cannot be published in Nature and its sub-journals at the same time, and the list of online articles can be on the same list.
Wei Xingsi continued on the phone and said: "I have forwarded the email to you. I published an "Nature" big magazine. It is worth celebrating. Today is Friday. I will take you out to eat tonight..."
"Also, you inform others that you will not be doing the experiment today. We will organize the laboratory together and clean it up. After all, there will be a conference next week. Teachers from other schools have to visit our laboratory and have to give it to them. Make a good impression."
"In addition, the website of our research group can be slightly revised. I think we can set up a "representative work" column and select a few of the most representative work of our group to hang up, such as this "Nature·Energy", and In your previous two major AM articles, you can also mark the highlights of the article, such as listing the number of real-time citations, marking cover articles, hot articles, highly cited articles, and so on."
"Okay." Xu Qiuying said. Now that there are more articles in the group, it is indeed necessary to organize the work and highlight the representative works.
When the phone was hung up, Xu Qiu saw that Wei Xingsi had posted a PDF file in the WeChat group chat of the research group, which was his "Nature·Energy" article.
Suddenly, another group of subjects where Teacher Wei was absent started to chat.
Chen Wanqing raised her head first: "Congratulations to Xu Qiuxi for mentioning the "Nature" Da Zi magazine [celebration]."
Feifei Wu followed closely: "Congratulations to Xu Qiuxi for mentioning the "Nature" Da Zi magazine [celebration]."
The others in the back also copied them directly, maintaining a neat formation.
‘Always feel that they are suggesting something. Xu Qiu muttered inwardly, and then sent a hundred and ten lucky red envelopes to everyone, and then informed them about the evening dinner and the cleaning of the laboratory.
After that, Xu Qiu closed WeChat, logged in to the mailbox, and checked the email.
This "Nature·Energy" article, as expected by Xu Qiu before, was sent back to the five reviewers for a second review.
In the last revision, two of the five reviewers’ comments were
recommended for direct acceptance
and three were for
recommended acceptance after revision
. Now, after Xu Qiu’s revision and responses to the reviewers’ questions, five The comments of the reviewers were all changed to "recommended direct acceptance".
Therefore, the editor did not send the article back to Xu Qiu and the others to continue editing, but directly accepted the article.
After a revised article, if the editor sends the article back to the reviewers again, they can see each other's comments and the author's reply.
At this time, if all the comments for the first time are positive and there are no completely negative comments, and the author's correction is indeed good, the reviewer will generally not choose to be a villain, but will let the article pass.
Of course, there are exceptions to everything.
Xu Qiu heard from Chen Wanqing before that when she had a master's degree, she encountered a strange incident in the group.
At that time, one of her seniors voted for a JMCA.
I met three reviewers. In the first review comments, one reviewer suggested "direct acceptance", and the other two reviewers suggested a "big change". Finally, the editor gave a big change.
After the major changes were over, I re-submitted to JMCA, and received the news soon.
In the previous two "big changes", one changed to suggest "direct acceptance", and the other made some comments, suggesting "accept after modification".
Both of these are normal, and the reviewer who previously suggested "direct acceptance" has changed his attitude 180 degrees and gave a rejection of the manuscript.
As a result, the editors of JMCA adopted the opinions of the "changing" reviewer, and finally issued a rejection opinion, which was very fascinating.
At 9:30 in the morning, Xu Qiu came to Caiyi 216. He and the fellows in the research team blew for a while, and enjoyed a wave of worship from the fellows. Only then did he start busy with today's work.
The first thing is to clean the laboratory. Because the laboratory in Handan is very small, only about 30 square meters, the task is not heavy. The task team is divided among a dozen people, and it takes less than an hour to complete.
Next, Xu Qiu started to work on the new "Representative Work" column on the webpage of the research team mentioned by Teacher Wei earlier.
In terms of the selection of representative works, he mainly referred to the list of ten representative works from the last time he applied for the fund, and added the latest articles, making a total of fifteen.
In terms of web page construction, this time we need to create a new column, which is not the same as the previous update of the research results of the research group. It is a little troublesome. You may need to create a new file and write more code.
The key point is that Xu Qiu had not come into contact with relevant knowledge before, so he had to learn the knowledge of simple webpage production by himself, and spent a few hours to finally handle the matter.
He couldn't help feeling a little bit. He joined Wei Xingsi's research group. Apart from doing scientific research, he learned a lot of other miscellaneous skills.
In the afternoon, Xu Qiu previewed the content of his speech at the conference next Tuesday several times in advance, strictly controlling the time of each part within the planning, and ensuring that the total duration is about 30 minutes.
In addition, regarding the conference, Feifei Wu has already prepared five posters and printed them out, and posted them in several major science and engineering buildings on the Handan campus, including the first floor of materials, the second floor of materials, and the advanced materials building. , There are also Polymer Building and Old Chemistry Building.
When posting the poster, Wu Feifei discovered that most of the laboratories of science and engineering are still stuck in the Handan campus, and they have not responded to the school's call to move to Jiangwan, probably because they are afraid of trouble.
And in general this kind of work is rarely taken the lead.
If no one takes the lead, they will fall into a state of waiting and seeing each other.
Anyway, the Fa doesn't blame the public. If you don't move, I don't move, it won't have any impact. If you can delay it for a while, it will take a while.
Of course, there is a high probability that it will not be delayed for too long, after all, the school's redhead files have already been down.
Most teachers, even professors, actually don't have the ability to wrestle with the school.
Unless it is an academician-level leader, or a few top professors, who are irreplaceable, can they have the ability to bargain with the school.
Of course, for researchers of this level, they generally don't have to worry about such trivial matters. They just need to do scientific research and produce results.
Basically, the school will arrange top-level treatment for them. It is normal for a research group to have one building or half a building. Any other conditions are easy to discuss.
Because the school will have assessments every year, such as the selection of double first-class disciplines, and school rankings, etc., the most important indicator is academic achievements, so whoever can produce more academic achievements will naturally enjoy certain privileges.
Just like the previous "The internal value debate of a major factory" involving moon cake incidents, derailment incidents and test-taking incidents, some people said:
Low P touches the red line, low P is gone; high P touches the red line, and the red line is gone; Touch the exam, the exam is gone."
This society is such a reality.
Most of the time, the rules are indeed used to restrain the weak.
Of course, to a certain extent, this is also a kind of protection.
Because the people who can really ignore the rules, or the makers of the rules, account for only a very small number, one in a thousand, one in ten thousand, or even less.
The vast majority of the remaining people are also divided into different levels.
If there are no rules to restrain the "weak people who are not so weak", they will bully the "weak people who are weaker than them", and then pass it on layer by layer, and the bottom layer will never be there. The day of turning over.
In reality, the law is a relatively common rule, and it also conforms to the rule of "binding and protecting the weak."
On the one hand, the law clarifies the cost of illegal crimes, deterring the "not so weak and weak", preventing them from committing illegal and criminal things easily, and effectively protecting the basic rights and interests of the "true and weak".
On the other hand, although it is said that "the emperor breaks the law and the common people commit the same crime", in actual operation, everyone knows how it is possible. There are always some people who are detached.
Wei Xingsi had already booked the place for dinner in the evening. Just on Daxue Road, there was a new Sichuan restaurant called "The Chest of Drawers."
Today, Mr. Wei didn't drive, and walked over with everyone from the research group. He also brought four bottles of wine, three red and one white.
I can see that Teacher Wei is really happy. He usually doesn't drink alcohol for dinner with his students. It is rare to break an example today.
Then Xu Qiu suffered. He was toasted in turn. If he didn't drink enough of his own drink, plus acting online, he would have to go back sideways.
