Hsin-Wei Wang, Emily Pentzer, Todd Emrick,* and Thomas P. Russell* have recently published an article in ACS Macro Letters.
Published January 21, 2014 edition
Wang et al. prepared fibrillar structures from a low band gap polymer, poly[N-9´´-heptadecanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5-(4´,7´-di-2-thienyl-2´,1´,3´-benzothiadiazole)] (PCDTBT) through solvent induced crystallization. The width of the fibers suggests that the polymer chains are oriented perpendicular to the fiber axis, while the the undulated texture, suggests that the nanofibrils are formed by smaller crystalline units that associate preferentially on specific crystal faces into a linear array. These results afford insight into the assembly of conjugated polymers in the formation of active layers in photovoltaic devices.