An article by Lei Zhang, Feng Liu, Ying Diao, Hilary S. Marsh, Nicholas S Colella, Arthi Jayaraman, Thomas P. Russell, Stefan C. B. Mannsfeld*, and Alejandro L. Briseno* is featured in the current issue of JACS.
Dr. Lei Zhang from the Briseno group synthesized a series of PBTTT oligomers for systematically examining the interaction with PC71BM as molecular conjugation length increases. Experiments and molecular simulations show that the PC71BM intercalation “catalyzes” a more efficient packing of the BTTT-2 dimers. Crystal structure analysis revealed that the straight BTTT-2 side chains form 1-D channels that perfectly host PC71BM, but, in the pure material, accommodate the interdigitated side chains from adjacent layers. This is the first time the actual sub-lattice cell of PC71BM has been determined from the X-ray data.