The Indian Family Welfare Program, though successful in increasing contraceptive use among couples who have achieved their desired family size, has failed in educating people about the importance and need of using contraceptive methods for spacing births. With its Indian collaborators, the Population Council's Frontiers in Reproductive Health (FRONTIERS) program undertook a study to test a model to increase use of postpartum contraception among young pregnant women with a parity of 0 or 1. The study showed that the Behavior Change Communication (BCC) model developed to promote Healthy Timing and Spacing of Pregnancy (HTSP) was effective in promoting the lactational amenorrhea method and postpartum contraception and could be rolled out easily; misconceptions about the return of fertility and its links to the biological marker of the menstrual cycle are the main barriers in a timely beginning of postpartum contraception; and acceptance of community workers (CWs) in a family increases if counseling focuses on HTSP and its benefits to mother, child, and family. The report concludes that the complementing effort by CWs of two Ministries to achieve similar objectives is feasible and provides a synergistic effect. The BCC materials, counseling aids, and messages developed for the projects are ready to use in scaling up the program.
Herein we present an extension of our work on indacenodithiophenes (IDT) by replacing the central benzene ring with a thieno(3,2-b) thiophene unit. This newly developed thieno[3,2-b]thieno bisthiophene (4T) donor moiety was synthesized from commercially available reagents and incorporated into a series of donor-acceptor polymers. We will discuss the pronounced donating character of 4T compared to IDT and the choice of bridging atom in those new polymers with an emphasis on field effect transistor and photovoltaic device performance.
A bis-azide-based small molecule crosslinker is synthesized and evaluated as both a stabilizing and efficiency-boosting additive in bulk heterojunction organic photovoltaic cells. Activated by a noninvasive and scalable solution processing technique, polymer:fullerene blends exhibit improved thermal stability with suppressed polymer skin formation at the cathode and frustrated fullerene aggregation on ageing, with initial efficiency increased from 6% to 7%.
Large‐scale production of organic solar modules requires low‐cost and reliable materials with reproducible batch‐to‐batch properties. In case of polymers, their (photo)physical properties depend strongly on the polymers’ molecular weight (MW). Herein, the impact of the MW of the donor polymer poly(3‐hexylthiophene) (P3HT) on the photophysics is studied in blends with a recently developed rhodanine‐endcapped indacenodithiophene nonfullerene acceptor (IDTBR), a bulk heterojunction (BHJ) system that potentially fulfills the aforementioned criteria for large‐scale production. It is found that the power conversion efficiency (PCE) increases when the weight‐average MW is increased from 17 kDa (PCE: 4.0%) to 34 kDa (PCE: 6.6%), whereas a further increase in MW leads to a reduced PCE of 4.4%. It is demonstrated that the charge generation efficiency, as estimated from time‐delayed collection field experiments, varies with the P3HT MW and is the reason for the differences in photocurrent and device performance. These findings provide insight into the fundamental photophysical reasons of the MW dependence of the PCE, which is taken into account when using polymer‐based nonfullerene acceptor blends in solar cell devices and modules.
Silver and its coordination compounds have been recognized since prehistoric times to possess antimicrobial potential, but in the last few decades, this metal and its coordination compounds have been widely explored due to their wide range of antimicrobial spectra against various bacteria, viruses, and fungi. Besides antimicrobial applications, this metal is allied with high effectiveness, less toxicity, and negligible antimicrobial resistance. Despite extensive research in this field and the synthesis of quite a lot of Silver(I) compounds, most synthesized compounds are in the academic research milieu, and a few have been accepted for clinical applications as bioactive agents. We report here on the last ten-year growth and progression in this research field, namely on Silver(I) coordination complexes as bioactive agents. An overview of the structural variation of coordination compounds of Silver with a particular organic ligand is given, such as N-Heterocyclic Carbenes (NHC), heteroatom-containing ligands, mixed ligands, N-ligand, and carboxylate ligands, with specific attention to antibacterial potential. We are presenting here an overview of Silver(I) coordination complexes with the intention of thought-provoking further appraisal of their potential irrefutable applications in clinics and therapeutic.
Two novel indacenodithiophene (IDT) based donor–acceptor conjugated polymers for use in organic field effect transistors and photovoltaic devices are synthesized and characterized. The effect of inclusion of two fluorine atoms on the acceptor portion of the polymer is thoroughly investigated via a range of techniques. The inductively withdrawing and mesomerically donating properties of the fluorine atoms result in a decrease of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO), with little effect on the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) as demonstrated through density functional theory (DFT) analysis. Inclusion of fluorine atoms also leads to a potentially more planar backbone through inter and intrachain interactions. Use of the novel materials in organic field effect transistor (OFET) and organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices leads to high mobilities around 0.1 cm2/(V s) and solar cell efficiencies around 4.5%.
Solar cells based on blends of the donor polymer, P3HT, with the nonfullerene acceptor, O-IDTBR, have been shown to exhibit promising efficiencies and stabilities for low-cost organic photovoltaic devices. We focus herein on the charge separation and recombination dynamics in such devices. By employing selective wavelength excitations of P3HT and O-IDTBR, we show that photoexcitation of P3HT results in lower internal quantum efficiency (IQE) for photocurrent generation than that observed for photoexcitation of O-IDTBR. Transient absorption and photoluminescence quenching studies indicate that this lower IQE results primarily from higher geminate recombination losses of photogenerated charges following P3HT excitation compared with O-IDTBR excitation, rather than from differences in exciton separation efficiency. These higher geminate recombination losses result in lower photocurrent generation efficiency at short circuit upon selective excitation of the P3HT donor, when compared with O-IDTBR excitation.
An entry from the Cambridge Structural Database, the world’s repository for small molecule crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the CCDC and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures.