Title
Tuning the synthesis of fully conjugated block copolymers to minimize architectural heterogeneity
Date Issued
01 January 2017
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Lee Y.
Aplan M.
Seibers Z.
Kilbey S.
Wang Q.
Publisher(s)
Royal Society of Chemistry
Abstract
Conjugated block copolymers simultaneously control the mesoscale morphology and interfacial structure of the active layer in organic electronic devices. Fully conjugated block copolymers, where both backbones are conjugated, are commonly synthesized in two steps. First, poly(3-alkylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) is synthesized by Kumada catalyst transfer/Grignard metathesis polymerization. The second block, typically a push-pull alternating copolymer, is added on to the P3HT macroreagent in a chain-extension reaction using either a Suzuki or a Stille polycondensation. Consequently, products can be a mixture of homopolymers, diblock copolymers, and multi-block copolymers. We demonstrate the optimum reaction conditions for the two-step synthesis of poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl)-block-poly((9,9-bis-(2-octyl)fluorene-2,7-diyl)-alt-(4,7-di(thiophene-2-yl)-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole)-5′,5′′-diyl) (P3HT-b-PFTBT), a block copolymer that can be used as the sole active-layer material in organic photovoltaic devices. In the first reaction, preventing excess Grignard reagent to avert excess in the stoichiometry between Grignard reagent and monomer ensures end-group control of the P3HT macroreagent. In the second reaction, asymmetric monomer feed ratios with excess fluorene promotes coupling of PFTBT to P3HT. Using P3HT-b-PFTBT as an example, we demonstrate the synthetic parameters that are important to produce diblock copolymers with minimal impurities. This, in turn, promotes microphase separation in block copolymer films and leads to enhanced power conversion efficiencies in block copolymer solar cell devices.
Start page
20412
End page
20421
Volume
5
Issue
38
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ciencia de los polímeros
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85030570113
Source
Journal of Materials Chemistry A
ISSN of the container
20507488
Sponsor(s)
Financial support from the Office of Naval Research under Grant No. N000141410532 is gratefully acknowledged. The Advanced Light Source is an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02– 05CH11231. A portion of this research was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility. ZDS and SMKII acknowledge support from the NSF (Award no. EPS 1004083 and 1512221). The authors thank Dr Tatiana Laremore at the Penn State Proteomics and Mass Spectrometry Core Facility, University Park, PA for the help with MS data acquisition.
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