We report on the production and characterization of liquid scintillators for the detection of electron antineutrinos by the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment. One hundred eighty-five tons of gadolinium-loaded (0.1% by mass) liquid scintillator (Gd-LS) and two hundred tons of unloaded liquid scintillator (LS) were successfully produced from a linear-alkylbenzene (LAB) solvent in six months. The scintillator properties, the production and purification systems, and the quality assurance and control (QA/QC) procedures are described.

Isoindigo-based conjugated polymers, PII2T-C6 and PII2T-C8, with carbosilane side chains have been designed and synthesized for stretchable electronic applications. The carbosilane side chains offerred a simple synthetic pathway to evaluate long and branched side chains in high yields and were prepared with a six or eight linear spacer plus two hexyl or octyl chains after branching. The studied polymers showed a high charge carrier mobility of 8.06 cm2 V–1 s–1 with an on/off current ratio of 106 as probed using a top-contact transistor device with organized solid state molecular packing structures, as investigated through grazing-incidance X-ray diffreaction (GIXD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) technique systematically. The studied polymers, more attractive, exhibited superior thin film ductility with a low tensile modulus in a range of 0.27–0.43 GPa owing to the branched carbosilane side chain, and their mobility was remained higher than 1 cm2 V–1 s–1 even under a 60% strain along parallel or perpendicular direction to the tensile strain. Such polymer films, in addition, can be simultaneously operated over 400 stretching/releasing cycles and maintained stable electrical properties, suggesting the newly designed materials possessed great potential for next-generation skin-inspired wearable electronic application with high charge carrier mobility, low tensile modulus, and stable device characteristics during stretching.

Oligosaccharides are one of the most promising biomaterials because they are abundant, renewable, diversified, and biosourced. The use of oligo- or polysaccharides for high-performance non-volatile organic field-effect-transistor memory is demonstrated herein. The charge-storage mechanism is attributed to charged hydroxyl groups that induce stronger hydrogen bonding, thus leading to the stabilization of trapped charges. This study reveals a promising future for green memory devices.

Diblock copolymers consisting of electron-donating poly[2,7-(9,9-dihexylfluorene)] (PF) rods and electron-withdrawing poly (pendent isoindigo) (Piso) coils were designed and synthesized through a click reaction. The electronic properties and interchain organization of the copolymers could be tuned by varying the PF/Piso ratio (PF 14 -b-Piso n (n = 10, 20, 60 and 100)). The highest occupied molecular orbital and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy levels of the studied polymers were progressively reduced as the length of Piso increased, affecting the charge trapping and intramolecular charge transfer environment between PF and Piso domains. Thermally treated PF 14 -b-Piso n thin films exhibited a clear nanofibrillar structure, and the d-spacing was enhanced systematically as the Piso chain length increased. Resistive memory characteristics were explored with a sandwich indium tin oxide/PF 14 -b-Piso n s/Al device configuration. The enhanced conjugated PF conducting channels led to stable resistance switching behavior, exhibiting volatile SRAM (static random access memory) (PF 14 -b-Piso 10 ) and nonvolatile WORM (write-once-read-many-times) (PF 14 -b-Piso 20 , PF 14 -b-Piso 60 , PF 14 -b-Piso 100 ) characteristics with a large ON/OFF ratio (10 6 ) and a stable retention time (10 4 s). A more appealing feature is that such memory cells were integrated on a soft poly(dimethylsiloxane) substrate, allowing for the development of a stretchable data storage device. Reliable and reproducible electrical characteristics, including SRAM-and WORM-type memories, could be explored as the device was stretched under an applied tensile strain ranging from 0 to 50%. The studied donor-acceptor copolymers indeed showed great potential for stretchable electronic applications with controllable digital information storage characteristics. NPG Asia Materials (2016) 8, e298; doi:10.1038/am.2016.112; published online 26 August 2016 INTRODUCTION Polymer-based electrical bistable memory devices have been extensively studied owing to their advantages of structural flexibility, low-cost, printability and three-dimensional stacking. 1-3 Such memories can be switched between high and low resistance states (that is, OFF and ON states) by applying an external electric field. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Electrical memory characteristics can generally be divided into two categories, namely nonvolatile (for example, WORM (writeonce-read-many-times) and flash) and volatile memory (for example, dynamic random access memory and SRAM (static random access memory)), which show different tendencies for the stored charges to dispel. The volatility of these digital information storage devices can be controlled by (1) the charge transfer or charge trapping ability of the active materials and (2) the morphological packing structures in the memory layers. Conjugated block copolymers can effectively manipulate charge storage volatility because of their unique self-organization properties, on the basis of the chemical structures of

Renewable polymers have attracted extensive research interest as substitutes for fossil fuel-based materials because they are sustainable and biodegradable. With the rapid increase in the applications of electronic devices, the integration of renewable polymers with electronics not only enhances the economic benefit of waste natural resources but also conserves our environment. In this review, an overview of renewable materials used in electronics, including passive components (that is, substrates, photoresists, templates and dispersion agents) and active components (that is, luminescence layers, protontransporting layers and charge-trapping layers), as well as their future perspective is provided. The relationships between chemical structures, their morphologies and the device characteristics will be discussed. It is hoped that this review will stimulate research and generate interest in applications of renewable materials for the electronics industry.