I Have a Research Support System

Now there are many articles about the ITIC system in the field of organic photovoltaics, and Wei Xingsi’s research group is the first to report on ITIC materials, so many manuscripts have been sent to him, and Xu Qiu has to review more than four or five articles every month on average. .

A NC article just published by Xu Zhenghong's research group, Xu Qiuxun had already seen it two months ago when he was reviewing the manuscript.

They reported a non-fullerene acceptor material named DBC-IC, combined with PBDB-T donor material, the device efficiency can reach 10.3%.

The molecular structure of DBC-IC is somewhat similar to ITIC, which is also 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 the others were doing was quite interesting, and they did not blindly follow the ITIC structure. Therefore, although the efficiency was not high, they were given a chance to issue a major reform opinion.

The main purpose is to ask them to add some experimental data on the stability of the device, and dig deeper into the possible similarities and differences between the non-conjugated system and the conjugated system.

The NC article officially published by Xu Zhenghong and the others now includes the two points 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 is slightly better, followed by ITIC, and PCBM is 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, while under the same conditions, the efficiency of the ITIC system has decayed to about 50%, and the device efficiency of the PCBM system is about 200. When the light is continuously illuminated for an hour, it has decayed to 0%.

On the other hand, through DFT simulations, they found that although there is a carbon-carbon single bond 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 magnitude of the rotation is not will be big.

In other words, although DBP-IC is a non-conjugated structure in name, it still has a strong conjugation property and is not a non-conjugated structure in the strict sense.

The conclusion that Xu Zhenghong and the others obtained from the supplementary experiment was similar to Xu Qiu's expectation.

The reason why organic photovoltaic materials can achieve photoelectric conversion is because there is a large π-conjugated structure in the photovoltaic material.

This conjugated structure can be excited by light energy, become an excited state, and generate excitons. After the excitons are split, the charges will be transported along the interior of the molecule or the conjugated structure between molecules.

There is a problem here, that is, the process of the conjugated structure absorbing light energy and being excited is actually equivalent to a chemical reaction.

Typically, this chemical reaction is reversible, meaning that the material returns to its original shape when light is turned off.

But 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 transportation of excitons, and then cause the loss of photocurrent, and the result is that the device efficiency is low.

Therefore, for organic photovoltaic materials, it is a relatively contradictory existence. The conjugated structure endows organic photovoltaic materials with the ability to convert light energy into electrical energy, but at the same time bears the curse of molecular structure instability under light. .

Generally speaking, Xu Zhenghong's work is quite enlightening, and Xu Qiu may also seek a balance between conjugation and non-conjugation in the future, taking into account the efficiency and stability of the device.

Of course, this is a relatively late event, 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 Yanhu Research Group of the University of Hong Kong.

Speaking of which, Wei Xingsi and Yan Hu's two research groups still have quite a origin:

Xu Qiu published PCE11 work ahead of Yan Hu and the others, causing Yan Hu's JACS article to be aborted;

Later, Yan Hu and his colleagues developed a material called ITIC2, which had the same molecular structure as the ITIC-Th designed by Xu Qiu, and published it first.

There is also a back and forth between the two research groups.

However, for Xu Qiu and Han Jiaying, ITIC-Th's job was robbed, it was basically irrelevant. At that time, they had a headache because they had too much work in hand, and Yan Hu just helped to lighten the burden.

And Yan Hu's PCE11 job was robbed, which hurts a bit. After all, that job is Xu Qiu's first Grand Slam article, and the number of citations of this article is expected to exceed 100 in the future, which can be called a masterpiece.

Now this AM article by Yan Hu is aimed at the improvement of PCE11 materials.

Perhaps out of certain considerations, Yan Hu and the others 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 narrow band gap, high crystallinity material, and it is not suitable for ITIC2 materials.

All that needs to be done now is to increase its bandgap while reducing the crystallinity of its molecules.

The method used by Yan Hu and others 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-T-T-T- to -T- BT-T-B-T-T-.

Based on this idea, they developed two new materials, named PTFB-O and PTFB-P, respectively. The two fluorine atoms on the inserted benzene ring of the former are ortho-substituted, while the latter are para-substituted.

The results show that the band gaps of the two donor materials are successfully pulled up to about 1.8 eV, forming complementary light absorption with ITIC2, and matching HOMO/LUMO energy levels.

However, there is a very large difference in the performance of battery devices based on PTFB-O and PTFB-P.

The efficiency of PTFB-O: ITIC2 system can reach 11.3%, while the efficiency of PTFB-P: ITIC2 system is only 6.89%.

In order to explain this phenomenon, Yan Hu and the others carried out analysis methods such as light source GIWAXS and DFT simulation.

Somewhat similar to Xu Zhenghong's NC article, Yan Hu and the others believe that it is also due to 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 U-shaped structure is formed. The regularity of this molecular structure is not high, and the material The crystallinity is thus 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. This molecular structure has a high degree of regularity, and the material Its crystallinity is equivalent to that of PCE11, which belongs to high crystallinity donor material.

Their overall story line is roughly the fine adjustment of the molecular structure, which changes the molecular configuration, which in turn changes the degree of crystallization of the material, affects the blending morphology of the acceptor, and ultimately leads to differences in device performance.

Yan Hu’s conclusion is still applicable to the ITIC series and even the IDTBR series of non-fullerene acceptors, that is, these non-fullerene acceptor materials prefer donor materials with less crystallinity.

Including the IEICO system of the previous seniors, the choice is the traditional PCE10;

Xu Zhenghong's IDTBR system uses both PCE10 and PCE11, and the performance of the former is better.

Except for the three articles by Ma Weiwei, Xu Zhenghong, and Yan Hu, the other works are not too noteworthy. After reading it, Xu Qiu didn't gain much.

Now many research groups are also starting to synthesize ITIC-like non-fullerene acceptor materials based on ICIN end groups. If the performance is good, the novelty is high, or the story is good, the article will be published better. On the contrary, the article will be published. Worse.

Considering the current popularity of ITIC, Xu Qiu went to the wos website to check his ITIC AM article, and found that the tags of hot articles and highly cited articles still exist.

And now the number of real-time citations has exceeded 100, reaching a staggering 117 times.

After deducting more than 20 self-citations by my research group, in just a few months, the number of articles cited by others has reached nearly 100 times, which is still very strong.

This work has a great chance to become a thousand-cited article, but it may take a few years. After all, the field of organic photovoltaics is a bit small, and the popularity is not high.

If it is placed in a popular field such as graphene and achieves academic achievements equivalent to development of ITIC materials, it is estimated that it will reach a thousand citations in less than two years.

In fact, from a utilitarian point of view, Xu Qiu's switch to an applied field such as lithium batteries, or a popular scientific research field such as graphene, has more money prospects or prospects than organic photovoltaics.

However, he chose to stick to the field of organic photovoltaics for the time being.

On the one hand, he is still a student after all, and there will be many restrictions on changing fields.

On the other hand, he has a lot of accumulation in the field of organic photovoltaics, and now he has become a small group of people at the forefront.

If you change domains, you need to give up all this and start over.

Instead of this, it is better to maximize this field and then consider others.

Although the unpopular field is relatively difficult, it may not be possible to counterattack.

Early on Friday morning, just as Xu Qiu walked out of the dormitory door, and was planning to do morning exercises with Han Jiaying, he received a call from Wei Xingsi.

Wei Xingsi said straight to the point: Just received the email, the article of Natural Energy has been officially accepted!

Xu Qiu replied calmly: Okay. Of course, he was actually a little excited inside.

Although I thought there was a high probability that there was nothing wrong with this Nature·Energy article, but it was not officially accepted, and I was always worried about what might happen. Now the dust has finally settled.

The publication of Nature·Energy is not only a breakthrough of Xu Qiu's own limit, but also led Wei Xingsi to cross the AM and EES grades, and reached the grade of the orthodox Nature major sub-journal.

At this stage, the real-time impact factor of Nature·Energy has reached about 42, even surpassing the main journal Nature with an impact factor of about 38.

From the perspective of influence and attention, although there is a gap between the major sub-journals of Nature and the main journal of Nature, the gap is actually not that big.

After all, the original intention of the sub-journal of Nature was to publish more and more subdivided fields in the scientific research circle, and there are more and more scientific researchers. However, the main journal of Nature can only include about 1,000 articles each year, and many High-end, groundbreaking articles are assigned to the corresponding Nature sub-journals only because the research field is relatively unpopular.

In other words, the birth of the major sub-journal of Nature is to solve the contradiction between the increasing number of high-level scientific research work and the limited number of articles included in CNS.

An approximate analogy can be made with the field of web literature.

Starting point male frequency has urban, fantasy, fantasy, fairy tale, science fiction, martial arts, military, reality, history, sports, suspense, light novels, sports, games and other categories.

Among them, urban, fantasy, etc. are relatively popular categories, while suspense, reality, military, etc. are relatively unpopular categories.

The top ten in the monthly ticket list is equivalent to publishing Nature, and the top ten monthly ticket lists in each category are equivalent to publishing Nature sub-journals.

The top ten monthly ticket list under the popular category is not much worse than the top ten monthly ticket list, which corresponds to the major sub-published of Nature.

However, the top ten monthly ticket list under the unpopular category may be quite different from the top ten monthly ticket list, which corresponds to the ordinary sub-journal of Nature.

Of course, this is only an approximate analogy, because articles cannot be published in Nature and its sub-journals at the same time, and the list of online articles can be on both lists.

On the phone, Wei Xingsi continued: I have already forwarded the email to you. It is worth celebrating to publish a major sub-journal of Nature. Today happens to be Friday. Let me take you out for dinner tonight...

Also, you told other people not to do experiments today. Let's tidy up and clean up the laboratory together. After all, there will be a conference next week. Teachers from other schools will inevitably visit our laboratory. We have to give them Make a good impression.

In addition, the website of our research group can be slightly revised. I think we can set up a column of 'representative works' and select a few of the most representative works of our group to post, such as this article Natural Energy, and You can also mark the highlights of the two previous AM articles of the Grand Slam, such as listing the number of real-time citations, marking the cover article, hot article, highly cited article, etc.

Okay. Xu Qiuying agreed, now that there are more articles in the group, it is indeed necessary to sort out the work and highlight the masterpieces.

After hanging up the phone, Xu Qiu saw that Wei Xingsi had sent a PDF file in the WeChat group chat of the research group, which was his Natural·Energy article.

Immediately, the group chat of another subject group where Mr. Wei was not present became lively.

Chen Wanqing started first: Congratulations to Xu Qiuxi for mentioning [Celebration], the main journal of Nature.

Wu Feifei followed closely behind: Congratulations to Xu Qiuxi for mentioning [Celebration], a major sub-published of Nature.

The other people behind also copied directly, maintaining a neat formation.

'It always felt like they were implying something. ’ Xu Qiu murmured inwardly, and then distributed one hundred and ten red envelopes for luck to everyone, and then informed about the evening dinner and cleaning of the laboratory.

Afterwards, Xu Qiu closed WeChat, logged into his mailbox, and checked his email.

This Natural Energy article, as Xu Qiu had expected, was sent back to the five reviewers for a second review.

At the time of the last revision, two of the five reviewers' comments were suggested to accept directly, and three were suggested to accept after revision. Now, after Xu Qiu's revision and responses to the reviewers' questions, five The comments of the reviewers are all changed to suggested direct acceptance.

Therefore, the editor did not send the article back to Xu Qiu and the others to continue to revise it, but directly accepted the article.

After a revised article, if the editor sends the article back to the reviewers, they can see each other's comments and the author's reply.

At this time, if all the opinions for the first time are positive and there are no completely negative opinions, and the author’s revision is indeed good, the reviewers will generally not choose to be villains, but will let the article pass.

Of course, there are exceptions to everything.

Before Xu Qiu heard from Chen Wanqing that when she was in her master's degree, there was a strange incident in the group.

At that time, one of her seniors submitted an article to JMCA.

I met three reviewers. In the first review comments, one reviewer suggested direct acceptance, and the other two reviewers suggested big revision, and finally the editor gave a big revision.

After the major changes were completed, I submitted it back to JMCA, and it didn't take long before I received the news.

For the previous two big changes, one suggested direct acceptance, and the other made some comments and suggested revised acceptance.

Both of these are normal, but the reviewer who suggested direct acceptance had a 180-degree change in attitude and gave a rejection opinion.

As a result, the editor of JMCA adopted the opinion of the changed reviewer, and finally issued a rejection opinion, which was very confusing.

At 9:30 in the morning, Xu Qiu came to Caiyi 216. He bragged for a while with his friends in the research group, enjoyed a wave of worship from them, and then started busy with today's work.

The first thing is to clean the laboratory. Because Handan's laboratory is very small, only about 30 square meters, the task is not heavy. The research team was divided among more than a dozen people, and it was done in less than an hour.

Next, Xu Qiu started to add the Masterpiece column to the webpage of the research group that Mr. Wei mentioned before.

In terms of selection of masterpieces, he mainly referred to the list of ten masterpieces from the last time he applied for the fund, and added a few more recent articles, making a total of fifteen.

In terms of webpage construction, a new column will be created this time, which is not the same as updating the scientific research results of the research group before. It is a little troublesome. It may be necessary to create a new file and write some more code.

The key point is that Xu Qiu had no experience with relevant knowledge before, so he had no choice but to learn the knowledge of simple webpage creation by himself. After spending several hours, he finally handled this matter well.

He couldn't help but feel a little moved. After joining Wei Xingsi's research group, besides doing scientific research, he learned a lot of other miscellaneous skills.

In the afternoon, Xu Qiu rehearsed the content of the speech at the conference next Tuesday several times in advance, strictly controlled the time of each part within the plan, and ensured that the total time would be around 30 minutes.

In addition, regarding the conference, Wu Feifei has already made the posters and printed five of them, and posted them in several major science and engineering buildings in the Handan campus, including the first floor of materials, the second floor of materials, and the advanced materials building , as well as the polymer building and the old chemical building.

When putting up the posters, Wu Feifei found that most of the science and engineering laboratories were still stranded in the Handan campus, and did not respond to the school's call. They moved to Jiangwan, probably out of trouble.

And generally this kind of work is not likely to be led by someone.

If no one takes the lead, it will fall into a state of waiting and watching each other.

Anyway, the law does not blame the public. If you don’t move, I don’t move, and there will be no impact. It can be delayed for a while.

Of course, there is a high probability that it won't take too long, after all, the school's red-headed documents have already come down.

Most teachers, even professors, do not have the ability to wrestle with the school.

Unless it is an academician-level boss, or a few top professors who are irreplaceable, they have the ability to bargain with the school.

Of course, researchers of this level generally don't have to worry about such trivial matters, they just need to do their research well and produce results.

Basically, the school will arrange top-level treatment for them. It is very normal for a research group to have a building or half a building, and any other conditions can be discussed.

Because the school conducts evaluations every year, such as the selection of double first-class disciplines, and school rankings, etc., the most important indicator of which is academic achievements, so whoever can produce more academic achievements will naturally enjoy certain privileges.

Just like the previous Great Internal Values ​​Debate in a Large Factory, which involved the moon cake incident, cheating incident and proxy test incident, some people said: If low P touches the red line, the low P will disappear; if high P touches the red line, the red line will disappear; if high P touches the red line, the red line will disappear; If you touch the exam, the exam is gone.

This society is such a reality.

Most of the time, rules are indeed used to restrain the weak.

Of course, to some extent, this is also a kind of protection.

Because the people who can really ignore the rules, or the makers of the rules, are 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 levels.

If there are no rules to restrain the not so weak weak, they will bully the weaker than them, and then pass it down layer by layer, and the bottom layer will never recover.

In reality, the law is a relatively common rule, and it also conforms to the article of restraining and protecting the weak.

On the one hand, the law clarifies the cost of breaking the law and committing crimes, which deters the not so weak and the weak so that they will not easily do illegal and criminal things, and effectively protects the basic rights and interests of the true and weak.

On the other hand, although it is said that the son of heaven breaks the law and the common people are the same crime, but in practice, everyone knows how it is possible, there are always some people who are detached.

Wei Xingsi has already booked a place for dinner in advance. On Daxue Road, there is a newly opened Sichuan restaurant called Chest of Drawers.

Today, Teacher Wei didn't drive, and walked with everyone in the research group, and also brought four bottles of wine, three red and one white.

It can be seen that Teacher Wei is really happy. He usually does not drink alcohol when he has dinner with students. Today is a rare exception.

Then, Xu Qiu suffered a disaster, and was toasted in turn. If he hadn't passed the limit on drinking, and his acting skills were online, he would probably have to go back sideways.

Thanks to Menphisto for rewarding 1000 starting coins, radical books rewarding 500 starting coins, and Ziyun. Rewarding 100 starting coins.