Title
Random Copolymers Allow Control of Crystallization and Microphase Separation in Fully Conjugated Block Copolymers
Date Issued
13 November 2018
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Lee Y.
Aplan M.
Seibers Z.
Xie R.
Culp T.
Wang C.
Hexemer A.
Kilbey S.
Wang Q.
University Park
Publisher(s)
American Chemical Society
Abstract
Thin films of fully conjugated donor-acceptor block copolymers composed of an electron donating block and an electron accepting block can be used as single component photoactive layers in organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices. In order to realize their full potential, control over microphase separation and thin-film morphology are critical. In conjugated block copolymer systems where one or more blocks can crystallize, the morphological evolution is governed by the competition between microphase separation and crystallization. In this work, we control crystallization of fully conjugated block copolymers with a random copolymer block. We suppress the crystal packing of poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) through the insertion of a small number of 3-octylthiophene (3OT) units within the chains, yielding poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl-random-3-octylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P[3HT-r-3OT]). While crystallization of P3HT dominates the morphology and prevents microphase separation in poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl)-block-poly((9,9-dioctylfluorene-2,7-diyl)-alt-(4,7-di(thiophene-2-yl)-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole)-5′,5″-diyl) (P3HT-b-PFTBT), modest levels of 3OT suppress crystallization in P[3HT-r-3OT]-b-PFTBT, and permit microphase separation. Thus, we demonstrate that incorporating a random copolymer into a donor-acceptor block copolymer can increase control over microphase separation and lead to enhanced performance in OPV devices.
Start page
8844
End page
8852
Volume
51
Issue
21
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
IngenierÃa quÃmica
QuÃmica
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85056584958
Source
Macromolecules
ISSN of the container
00249297
Sponsor(s)
Financial support from the Office of Naval Research under Grant 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. Z.D.S. and S.M.K.II acknowledge support from the NSF (Award Nos. 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. A portion of this research was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility.
Sources of information:
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Scopus