Pearson, AJ, Wang, T, Watters, DC et al. (7 more authors) (2014) Morphology Development in Amorphous Polymer: Fullerene Photovoltaic Blend Films During Solution Casting. Advanced Functional Materials, 24 (5). pp. 659-667. ISSN 1616-301X
Abstract
The evolution of film structure is reported during solution casting of PCDTBT:PCBM 1:4 wt%, a polymer:fullerene blend system that finds application in an organic photovoltaic device. Using the complimentary techniques of grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering and spectroscopic ellipsometry, a number of distinct processes that occur during film formation are identified. This includes the growth of fullerene molecules into nanoscale aggregates, the onset of which coincides with the solubility limit of the material in the casting solvent being reached. An apparent delay in Bragg scatter from the PCDTBT-rich phase of the film suggests that, for the film composition studied here, the aggregation of PCBM precedes weak self-organisation of the conjugated polymer. This behaviour is compared with the drying dynamics of a number of different polymer:fullerene blends that each contain a high weight fraction of fullerene molecules, and a range of comparable solid concentrations are identified beyond which the precipitation of fullerene aggregates from solution occurs. These observations provide an insight into the development of structure in relatively amorphous polymer:fullerene blends for organic photovoltaic applications and potentially assists the future optimisation of this category of materials. © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2013 Pearson et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | conjugated polymers;organic photovoltaics; PC70BM; PCDTBT; polymer blends |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (Sheffield) The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Chemistry (Sheffield) The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Physics and Astronomy (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EPRSC EP/I028641/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 16 Apr 2014 14:04 |
Last Modified: | 18 Nov 2016 17:09 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adfm.201301922 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/adfm.201301922 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:78546 |