Ultrathin n-Type Organic Nanoribbons with High Photoconductivity and Application in Optoelectronic Vapor Sensing of Explosives

Abstract

Well-defined ultrathin nanoribbons have been fabricated from an amphiphilic electron donor-acceptor (D-A) supramolecule comprising perylene tetracarboxylic diimide as the backbone scaffold to enforce the one-dimensional intermolecular assembly via strong pi-stacking. These nanoribbons demonstrated high photoconductivity upon illumination with white light. The high photoconductivity thus obtained is likely due to the optimal molecular design that enables a good kinetic balance between the two competitive processes, the intramolecular charge recombination (between D and A) and the intermolecular charge transport along the nanoribbon. The photoconduction response has also proven to be prompt and reproducible with the light turning on and off. The photogenerated electrons within the nanoribbon can be efficiently trapped by the adsorbed oxygen molecules or other oxidizing species, leading to depletion of the charge carriers (and thus the electrical conductivity) of the nanoribbon, as typically observed for n-type semiconductor materials as applied in chemiresistors. Combination of this sensitive modulation of conductivity with the unique features intrinsic to the nanoribbon morphology (large surface area and continuous nanoporosity when deposited on a substrate to form a fibril film) enables efficient vapor sensing of nitro-based explosives.

Semiconductive, One‐Dimensional, Self‐Assembled Nanostructures Based on Oligopeptides with π‐Conjugated Segments

“…There are two key factors to the self-assembly in the organic solvent: 1) the hydrophilic parts of peptides form b sheets through hydrogenbonding interactions inside of the ribbon structures, [9] and 2) the hydrophobic parts of the anthracene units form p-pstacking at the edge of these ribbon microstructures. [18,19] Absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy confirmed the strong p-p stacking of the anthracenes within the 1D nanostructures. A solution of 1 in water shows absorption bands at 331, 346, 363, and 383 nm, typical of the anthracene moiety ( Figure S2 in the Supporting Information).…”

Discotic liquid crystal-nanoparticle hybrid systems

“…[87][88][89] The incorporation of GNRs in these discotic nanowires may provide better 1-D conducting properties. With this objective, we observed the formation of nanoribbons of undoped and GNR-doped triphenylene discotics via simple solution processing.…”

Investigation of the spectral, optical and surface morphology properties of theN,N′-Dipentyl-3,4,9,10-perylenedicarboximide small molecule for optoelectronic applications

“…[1] Organic fields of materials, nanomaterials, semiconductors, and electronics have been rapidly grown into new applications. [2] In the past few decades, organic materials such as organic semiconductors have received substantial attention for many electronic, optoelectronic, and photonic applications [3] such as solar cells, [4][5][6][7] electroluminescent diodes, [8] photovoltaics, [6,7] light emitting diodes, [3,6,9] thermoelectric generators, [10] sensors, [11,12] chemical sensors, [13] vapor sensors, [14] gas sensors, [15,16] photodetectors, [17] lasers, [18] nanoscale lasers, [18] phototransistors, [19] field-effect transistors, [19] thin film transistors, [19] radio frequency identification tags, [19] memory elements, [20] smart cards, [21] optical waveguides, [22] optoelectronic devices, [7,21] color tunable displays, [23] and displays [21,23] over their inorganic counterparts [2] because of their facile and large-scale synthesis, [24] fundamental importance in understanding of intermolecular interactions, [25] easy processing, [3] good solution processability, [7,24] flexibility, …”