Enhancement of Interfacial Polymer Crystallinity Using Chromism in Single Inorganic Nanowire–Polymer Nanohybrids for Photovoltaic Applications

Abstract

Interfaces play an important role in bulk heterojunction organic/inorganic hybrid photovoltaic devices, but directly probing the interface in order to improve device characteristics is exceedingly difficult. We report on a method to form core-shell inorganic nanowire-polymer hybrids of a conducting polymer, poly(3-hexlthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT), and a semiconducting nanowire, cadmium sulfide (CdS), using solution processing to create the polymer shell around the nanowire in order to study the polymer-nanowire interface directly without interference from bulk effects. We have used the rod-coil transition (chromism) in P3HT to seed and enhance the crystallinity at the polymer-nanowire interface. We have shown that creating more order within the P3HT main chain, by controlling the temperature and the solvent quality, can increase the extent of polymer crystallinity present at the polymer-nanowire interface. We believe using the rod-coil transition to create more order in P3HT and the resulting polymer-nanowire interface will provide a facile pathway for designing future organic-inorganic photovoltaic devices.

Interfacial Synthesis and Functionality of Self‐Stabilized Polydiaminonaphthalene Nanoparticles

“…Nanostructured conducting polymers are attracting intensive interest because of their novel functionalities and wide potential applications as sensors, [1][2][3] actuators, [3][4][5] molecular wires, [6][7][8] nanoarrays, [9] solar cells, [3,[10][11][12][13][14] supercapacitors, [15] neuron devices, [16] and in nanolithography. [17] The synthesis of conducting polymer nanomaterials has been performed both chemically and electrochemically with the aid of either hard templates, such as aluminosilicate, [6] porous alumina, [18] and polycarbonate, [19] or soft templates such as micelles [20] and spatial stabilizers.…”

Visualizing order in dispersions and solid state morphology with Cryo-TEM and electron tomography: P3HT : PCBM organic solar cells

“…Previous cryogenic electron microscopy studies 58,59 have revealed already some insight in photo-voltaic structures. In this paper, the relation between starting dispersions and the resulting photo-voltaic structures is elucidated as an example of how cryo-electron tomography can help to understand the connection between structures in solution and the resulting solid state morphology.…”

Oriented Polythiophene Nanofibers Grown from CdTe Quantum Dot Surfaces

“…A common method to accomplish grafting is to exchange the capping ligands on the QDs with conducting polymers or oligomers 24. Unfortunately, a direct organic/inorganic interfacial interaction is difficult to achieve using grafting methods, a setback that is attributed to the low affinity between conducting polymers and inorganic nanocrystals 25. As a result of the low affinity, most organic/inorganic hybrid material syntheses rely on chemical linkers to tether the two components, yet this provides a buffer zone between nanocrystal and polymer, which again lowers the charge transfer efficiency.…”