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Organic semiconductors (OSCs) have beneficial uses in energy harvesting including thermoelectric and photovoltaic applications. However, the fundamental understanding of why some materials work better than others and chemical engineering present in the literature, such as side chain functionalisation and backbone modification as two typical approaches when trying to improve a material, is sometimes overlooked, and perceived to be universal. This can lead to new materials with undesired characteristics being produced, showing low performance for their application, and eventually being placed in the "dustbin of history". Therefore, the experiments within this thesis aim to show systematic studies on functionalisation's found in the literature including polar side chains for dopant stability and miscibility, polythiophene co-polymers for improved charge transport, highly orientated polymers films for thermoelectrics and cation size dependence on radical anion salts for doping OSCs. Using an array of optical, electrochemical, structural, and electrical measurements, the findings show that methodically using the stated functionalisation approaches on simple OSC materials, such as poly(3-hexylthiohene), can either lead to improved or worse characteristics for their uses. Hopefully, these findings will be considered when new and improved materials are synthesised, and the desired structure-function relationship is considered with care to obtain the right material for the right application.

All states are subject to emergency circumstances that may suggest special responses challenging the normal rule of law. The debate between Oren Gross and David Dyzenhaus asks how emergency powers can be best designed and employed to prevent their abuse and 'normalization' - the phenomenon by which the use of exceptional powers leaves persistent traces of their use in a state's normal institutions of government. This dissertation argues that containing normalization on the terms proposed by Dyzenhaus and Gross is unlikely to succeed because ideas about what emergency entails have expanded in the modern age, contributing to this normalization,and that these phenomena have been fuelled by intellectual features of modernity itself that the debate leaves largely unconsidered. The dissertation traces the contribution of this process, beginning with the medieval origins of modern ideas on emergency powers. This is a different point of departure from the current literature, which mostly focusses on classical precedent, and in particular the Roman idea of dictatorship. The dissertation argues that while the classical model is influential, too exclusive a focus on it obscures the precise nature of the change in thinking about emergency powers in the modern period. The medieval distinction between 'iurisdictio' and 'gubernaculum', or between that part of the activity of government that was restrained by the rule of law, and the functions of government that are limited only by the ruler's responsibility to God, is an important source for the theoretical distinction the dissertation employs between instrumental and non-instrumental law. Instrumental and non-instrumental law represent two ideal types of law. Non-instrumental law is concerned to provide a legal framework for the relations between members of a state, but leaves them free to choose their own purposes. Instrumental law treats law as an instrument of policy and subordinates the members of a state to the pursuit of one or more shared goals. In actual states, legal systems combine elements of both concepts of law. But emergency tends to shift the balance towards the instrumental perspective. War in particular imposes the overriding purpose of securing victory and this tends to be reflected in lasting changes in the law of the state. But ideological and technological factors have also made a significant contribution. The dissertation traces this process in outline in the early modern and medieval periods in relation to the idea of martial law in particular. It then offers a much more detailed analysis of some of the key episodes to do with colonialism, the two World Wars, and the ideological conflict involved in the clash between the Western and the Communist powers after 1945. It shows that the cumulative effect of all these episodes has been to create a more or less permanent and global condition of emergency that has been treated in legal terms in an ever more instrumental manner, liberating the executive to behave in a way unrestrained by considerations of due process. In the twenty-first century this situation has become so normalised that the contrast with the view of emergency in which 'iurisdictio' plays a significant role has been almost lost. But it argues that there has been nothing inevitable or necessary about this process and that in principle a response to emergency that does not eliminate procedural considerations associated with the non-instrumental rule of law remains both possible and desirable.

In positive portrayals of liberal democracy, the rule of law, which should see those caught violating the law subject to processes that may ultimately lead to sanction, is portrayed as a pillar of democratic societies. Moreover, the oversite of government actions, whether by sections of the state or outside bodies, is depicted as key to ensuring democratic states abide by the law and incidental violations are punished. Drawing their cue from a broader body of literature that trumpets the importance of transparency, openness and accountability (and the oversite they are said to engender) to the organisation and operation of democratic states, these portrayals can collectively be understood as reflecting a line of thought that can be labelled the democratic oversight narrative. Yet, presenting a problem for such positive portrayals is the reality that there is a history within the military and intelligence operations of the US and the UK of failures to punish those responsible for violations of international humanitarian law. Impunity, understood most simplistically as a lack of punishment for those responsible and/or a lack of recompense for victims, has accompanied such illegality on some occasions. Though such impunity has sometimes been highlighted, there is a dearth of literature devoted to theorising impunity within the context of US and UK national security operations. This thesis rectifies this by introducing an original theoretical taxonomy under the label democratic impunity. This taxonomy is then applied to impunity connected to some instances of detainee abuse that transpired within the Iraq War detention operations of both states, which, via system theory, are collectively codified as the Iraq War detention regime. Empirically, the novelty of this thesis stems from this codification, as well as the documentation of the largest number of detainee deaths (230) within the regime currently in the public domain and the presence of the largest data set of evidence pertaining to detainee abuse within the regime.