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2,8-difluoro-5,11-bis(triethylsilylethynyl)anthradithiophene (dif-TES-ADT) is a small molecule organic semiconductor that has drawn much interest as an active channel in organic thin film transistors (OTFTs). In particular, the solubility of dif-TES-ADT in numerous solvents and amorphous polymers, its chemical stability, and its ease in processing make it a supreme candidate for high performance devices. This review summarizes the progress in material crystallization and the film formation approach, including the surface treatment of Source/Drain metal electrodes with various self-assembled monolayers and the works on vertical phase segregation derived from blending dif-TES-ADT with various polymers. Electrical and environmental stabilities in dif-TES-ADT-based OTFTs and their origins are summarized. Finally, a discussion on the emerging applications of dif-TES-ADT OTFTs is explored. We believe that the individual effort summarized in this work will shed light on optimizing the electrical performance of dif-TES-ADT-based transistors and reveal their potential qualities, which will be useful to their applications in next-generation high performance organic electronics.

The intense pulsed light (IPL) post-treatment process has attracted great attention in the device fabrication due to its versatility and rapidity particularly for solution process functional structures in devices, flexible/printed electronics, and continuous manufacturing process. The metal oxide materials inherently have multi-functionality and have been widely used in form of thin films or nanostructures in device application such as thin film transistors, light emitting diodes, solar cells, supercapacitors, etc. The IPL treatment enhances the physical and/or chemical properties of the functional metal oxide through photothermal effects. However, most metal oxides are transparent to most range of visible light and require more energy for post-treatment. In this review, we have summarized the IPL post-treatment processes for metal oxide thin films and nanostructures in device applications. The sintering and annealing of metal oxides using IPL improved the device performances by employing additional light absorbing layer or back-reflector. The IPL process becomes an innovative versatile post-treatment process in conjunction with multi-functional metal oxides in near-future device applications.

We demonstrate the improvement in the efficiency of planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells by employing cadmium selenide tetrapods (CdSe TPs) as an electron extraction layer. The insertion of the CdSe TP layer between the titanium oxide (TiO2) and perovskite film facilitates electron transfer at the TiO2/perovskite interface, as indicated by the significantly quenched steady-state photoluminescence of the perovskite film. Furthermore, we observed a conductivity enhancement of the perovskite film by introducing the CdSe TP layer. The combination of both effects induced by the TPs leads to enhancement in the carrier extraction as well as decreased recombination losses in the perovskite solar cells. As a result, an efficiency of 13.5% (1 sun condition) is achieved in the perovskite solar cells that incorporate the CdSe TP layer, which is 10% higher than that of the device without the CdSe TP layer.