Journal article
Morphological and Device Evaluation of an Amphiphilic Block Copolymer for Organic Photovoltaic Applications
VD Mitchell, E Gann, S Huettner, CR Singh, J Subbiah, L Thomsen, CR McNeill, M Thelakkat, DJ Jones
Macromolecules | AMER CHEMICAL SOC | Published : 2017
Abstract
We report the morphological and photovoltaic evaluation of a novel fully conjugated donor/acceptor block copolymer system based on the P3HT-b-PFTBT scaffold. The incorporation of hydrophilic tetraethylene glycol side-chains into the PFTBT acceptor block generates an amphiphilic species whose properties provide demonstrable benefits over traditional systems. This design strategy facilitates isolation of the block copolymer from homopolymer impurities present in the reaction mixture, and we show that this purification leads to better-defined morphologies. The chemical disparity introduced between donor and acceptor blocks causes spontaneous microphase separation into well-defined domains, whic..
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Grants
Awarded by U.S. Department of Energy
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was made possible by support from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency which funds the project grants within the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics. Responsibility for the views, information or advice expressed herein is not accepted by the Australian Government. This work was supported in part by funding from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). AFM measurements were made possible through ARC LIEF Grant LE110100161. The authors thank Mr. Jianing Lu for his expert assistance with AFM measurements and Anna Graser for her invaluable support and assistance during beamtime. This research was undertaken in part on the SAXS/WAXS and Soft X-ray beamlines at the Australian Synchrotron, Victoria, Australia, and at beamline 11.0.1.2 of the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The Advanced Light Source is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC02-05CH11231. C.R.M. and E.G. acknowledge travel funding provided by the International Synchrotron Access Program (ISAP) managed by the Australian Synchrotron and funded by the Australian Government. S.H. acknowledges the Bavarian framework program "Soltech" for funding.