Fabrication and Characterizations of Poly(3-hexylthiophene) Nanofibers
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Fabrication and Characterizations of Poly(3-hexylthiophene) Nanofibers Surawut Chuangchote, Michiyasu Fujita, Takashi Sagawa*, and Susumu Yoshikawa* Institute of Advanced Energy, Kyoto University, Gokasho, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] ABSTRACT Conductive polymer nanofibers with the average diameters in the range of 60 nm - 2 µm were fabricated by electrospinning of a mixture of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) in a mixed solvent of chlorobenzene and methanol. Beaded fibers and/or uniform, smooth-surface fibers were successfully fabricated. The average diameter of the as-spun fibers decreased and the color of as-spun fibers changed with decreasing the concentration of P3HT or PVP. After the removal of PVP from as-spun fibers by Soxhlet extraction, pure P3HT fibers were obtained as a spindle-like with groove-like morphological appearance which may be widely applicable for some specific applications, such as photovoltaic cells, thin film transistors, and light emitting diodes. INTRODUCTION Conductive polymers have been shown to have optical, mechanical and electronic properties with easy processing. Therefore, a range of electronic and optoelectronic devices have been fabricated from conductive polymers, such as field-effect transistors, photovoltaic cells, and electroluminescent diodes. Recently, organic one-dimensional (1D) nanomaterials, including nanofibers, are growing broad interest because of their specific properties, e.g. large surface to volume ratio, improved mechanical properties, and flexibility in surface functionalities [1]. Conductive polymers have been fabricated into nanofiber form by various methods. Among them, electrospinning which utilizes electrostatic force to produce continuous ultrafine fibers with diameters ranging from microns down to a few nanometers has become one of the simple techniques for fabrication of conductive polymer nanofibers [2,3]. Because of the limitations of solvents to dissolve the polymers and suitable molecular weight of the polymers for electrospinning, electrospinning of neat conductive polymers resulted in non-uniform fibers with large amount of beads [3,4]. Therefore, various techniques have been developed to solve such those problems. We have reported a simple technique for improvement in the uniformity of electrospun nanofibers of a conductive polymer, poly[2-methoxy-5-(2′-ethylhexyloxy)-1,4-phenylenevinylene] (MEHPPV), by blending with poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) (see chemical structure in Figure 1(a)), an easily spinnable and easily extractable polymer [4-6]. Ultrafine MEH-PPV fibers could be obtained from electrospinning and subsequent Soxhlet extraction. Obtained fibers were applied to organic photovoltaic cells [7]. In this contribution, this technique was applied for the fabrication of another conductive polymer, poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) (see chemical structure in Figure 1(b)), which has been received much attention recently due to its specific properti
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