Wednesday, 2 November 2005 - 3:30 PM
418b
Electrospun Nanofibers of Conjugated Polymers
Amit Babel1, Dan Li
2, Younan Xia
2, and Samson A. Jenekhe
1. (1) Chemical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, (2) Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
Semiconductor nanowires, nanodots and other nanostructures have a variety of unique optical, electronic and magnetic properties arising from confinement effects. Nanowires of conjugated polymers are ideal system for studying 1-D confinement effects on optical and electrical properties and hold promise as building blocks for nanoelectronics. Electrospinning is a simple technique of growing interest for the preparation of nanofibers of diverse materials [1]. We have prepared high quality nanofibers from conjugated polymers, such as poly[2-methoxy-5-(2-ethylhexyloxy)-1,4-phenylenevinylene] (MEH-PPV) and its blends with poly(3-hexylthiophene) (PHT) or poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) (PFO), using the electrospinning technique and investigated the effect of one-dimensional confinement on the optical and electronic properties of conjugated polymer nanofibers [2,3]. Morphological and photophysical studies showed that the phase-separated domains in the MEH-PPV/PHT nanofibers (30-50 nm) are much smaller as compared to the blend thin films (100-150 nm) and efficient energy transfer was observed in these blend nanofibers. The MEH-PPV/PFO blend nanofibers had co-continuous or core-shell structures and significant energy transfer was absent in these blend nanofibers as compared to the bulk thin films. Field-effect transistors based on the MEH-PPV/PHT blend nanofibers exhibited p-channel transistor characteristics with hole mobility in the range of (0.05-1)×10-4 cm2/Vs. Our results demonstrate that conjugated polymer nanofibers are promising 1-D system to study confinement effects on charge transport and optical properties. [1] Li, D.; Xia, Y. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1151. [2] Dan, Li; Babel, A.; Jenekhe, S. A.; Xia, Y. Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 2062. [3] Babel, A.; Li D.; Xia, Y.; Jenekhe, S. A. Macromolecules 2005, 38, 4705.
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