TY - JOUR A1 - Duva, G. A1 - Pithan, L. A1 - Zeiser, C. A1 - Reisz, B. A1 - Dieterle, J. A1 - Hofferberth, B. A1 - Beyer, P. A1 - Bogula, L. A1 - Opitz, A. A1 - Kowarik, Stefan A1 - Hinderhofer, A. A1 - Gerlach, A. A1 - Schreiber, F. T1 - Thin-Film Texture and Optical Properties of Donor/Acceptor Complexes. Diindenoperylene/F6TCNNQ vs Alpha-Sexithiophene/ F6TCNNQ N2 - In this work, two novel donor/acceptor (D/A) complexes, namely, diindenoperylene (DIP)/1,3,4,5,7,8-hexafluoro-tetracyanonaphthoquinodimethane (F6TCNNQ) and alpha-sexithiophene (6T)/F6TCNNQ, are studied. The D/A complexes segregate in form of π−π stacked D/A cocrystals and can be observed by X-ray scattering. The different conformational degrees of freedom of the donor molecules, respectively, seem to affect the thin-film crystalline texture and composition of the D/A mixtures significantly. In equimolar mixtures, for DIP/F6TCNNQ, the crystallites are mostly uniaxially oriented and homogeneous, whereas for 6T/F6TCNNQ, a mostly 3D (isotropic) orientation of the crystallites and coexistence of domains of pristine compounds and D/A complex, respectively, are observed. Using optical absorption spectroscopy, we observe for each of the two mixed systems a set of new, strong transitions located in the near-IR range below the gap of the pristine compounds: such transitions are related to charge-transfer (CT) interactions between donor and acceptor. The optical anisotropy of domains of the D/A complexes with associated new electronic states is studied by ellipsometry. We infer that the CT-related transition dipole moment is perpendicular to the respective π-conjugated planes in the D/A complex. KW - Optical properties KW - Molecular semiconductor KW - X-ray diffraction PY - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b03744 SP - 18705 EP - 18714 PB - ACS AN - OPUS4-46400 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - GEN A1 - Kowarik, Stefan A1 - Pithan, L. T1 - kowarik-labs/AI-reflectivity: v0.1 N2 - AI-reflectivity is a code based on artificial neural networks trained with simulated reflectivity data that quickly predicts film parameters from experimental X-ray reflectivity curves. This project has a common root with (ML-reflectivity)[https://github.com/schreiber-lab/ML-reflectivity] and evolved in parallel. Both are linked to the following publication: Fast Fitting of Reflectivity Data of Growing Thin Films Using Neural Networks A. Greco, V. Starostin, C. Karapanagiotis, A. Hinderhofer, A. Gerlach, L. Pithan, S. Liehr, F. Schreiber, S. Kowarik (2019). J. Appl. Cryst. For an online live demonstration using a pre-trained network have a look at github. KW - Artificial neural networks KW - X-ray reflectivity PY - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3477583 PB - Zenodo CY - Geneva AN - OPUS4-51888 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Greco, A. A1 - Starostin, V. A1 - Karapanagiotis, C. A1 - Hinderhofer, A. A1 - Gerlach, A. A1 - Pithan, L. A1 - Liehr, Sascha A1 - Schreiber, Frank A1 - Kowarik, Stefan T1 - Fast fitting of reflectivity data of growing thin films using neural networks N2 - X-ray reflectivity (XRR) is a powerful and popular scattering technique that can give valuable insight into the growth behavior of thin films. This study Shows how a simple artificial neural network model can be used to determine the thickness, roughness and density of thin films of different organic semiconductors [diindenoperylene, copper(II) phthalocyanine and alpha-sexithiophene] on silica from their XRR data with millisecond computation time and with minimal user input or a priori knowledge. For a large experimental data set of 372 XRR curves, it is shown that a simple fully connected model can provide good results with a mean absolute percentage error of 8–18% when compared with the results obtained by a genetic least mean squares fit using the classical Parratt formalism. Furthermore, current drawbacks and prospects for improvement are discussed. KW - Artificial neural networks KW - X-ray reflectivity PY - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-498997 SN - 1600-5767 VL - 52 SP - 1342 EP - 1347 PB - Wiley AN - OPUS4-49899 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kowarik, Stefan A1 - Weber, C. A1 - Pithan, L. A1 - Zykov, A. A1 - Bommel, S. A1 - Carla, F. A1 - Felici, R. A1 - Knie, C. A1 - Bléger, D. T1 - Multiple timescales in the photoswitching kinetics of crystalline thin films of azobenzene-trimers N2 - Functional materials that exhibit photoinduced structural phase transitions are highly interesting for applications in optomechanics and mechanochemistry. It is, however, still not fully understood how photochemical reactions, which are often accompanied by molecular motion, proceed in confined and crystalline environments. Here we show that thin films of azobenzene trimers exhibit high structural order and determine the crystallographic unit cell. We demonstrate that thin film can be switched partially reversibly between a crystalline and an amorphous phase. The time constant of the photoinduced amorphisation as measured with real-time x-ray diffraction ($\approx $ 220 s) lies between the two time constants (120 s and 2870 s) of the ensemble photoisomerisation processes that are measured via optical spectroscopy. Our observation of a photoinduced shrinking of the crystalline domains indicates a cascading process, in which photoisomerisation starts at the surface of the thin film and propagates deeper into the crystalline layer by introducing disorder and generating free volume. This finding is important for the rapidly evolving research field of photoresponsive thin films and smart crystalline materials in general. KW - Azobenzene PY - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-648X/aa8654 SN - 0953-8984 SN - 1361-648X VL - 29 IS - 43 SP - Article 434001, 1 EP - 8 AN - OPUS4-42501 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kowarik, Stefan A1 - Pithan, L. A1 - Nabok, D. A1 - Cocchi, C. A1 - Beyer, P. A1 - Duva, G. A1 - Simbrunner, J. A1 - Rawle, J. A1 - Nicklin, C. A1 - Schäfer, P. A1 - Draxl, C. A1 - Schreiber, F. T1 - Molecular structure of the substrate-induced thin-film phase of tetracene N2 - We present a combined experimental and theoretical study to solve the unit-cell and molecular arrangement of the tetracene thin film (TF) phase. TF phases, also known as substrate induced phases (SIP), are polymorphs that exist at interfaces and decisively impact the functionality of organic thin films, e.g., in a transistor channel, but also change the optical spectra due to the different molecular packing. As SIPs only exist in textured ultrathin films, their structure determination remains challenging compared to bulk materials. Here, we use grazing incidence Xray diffraction and atomistic simulations to extract the TF unit-cell parameters of tetracene together with the atomic positions within the unit-cell. KW - X-ray DIFFRACTION KW - Tetracene KW - Semiconductor KW - Optoelectronics KW - Molecule PY - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5043379 VL - 149 IS - 14 SP - 144701-1 EP - 144701-5 PB - AIP Publishing AN - OPUS4-46399 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -