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Photocurrent imaging of phase segregation in a ternary polymer blend induced via a non-solvent route

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Abstract

Control of phase separation length scales of polymers in a solution-processed film of binary (two-component) polymer blends is the most important step to realize significant photocharge generation and transport efficiencies leading to efficient solar cells. The dynamics of phase segregation becomes more complex in ternary (three-component) polymer blends. In the three-component blend, one component serves as sensitizer, and other two act as donor and acceptor polymer. The sensitizer absorbs photons and the energy is quickly transferred to the host donor. Subsequently, efficient charge transfer occurs at the host donor/acceptor interface. Depending on the relative amount of phase segregation between sensitizer/donor, sensitizer/acceptor and donor/acceptor, the different photophysical mechanisms (viz. energy transfer and charge transfer) are either boosted or suppressed. The correct kind of morphology should allow efficient energy transfer at the sensitizer/donor interface followed by efficient charge transfer at the donor/acceptor interface. We attempt to address these requirements by modulating the nanomorphology of a ternary blend via tailoring the non-solvent concentration in the ternary polymer blend solution. Here, we study the effect of non-solvent mixing and resultant film morphology is characterized by wide-field local photocurrent imaging and photoluminescence imaging in a confocal microscope set-up.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. S. Ramakrishnan from the Inorganic and Physical Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, for providing us MEHPPV polymers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Advanced Science, Department of Physics, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore-14, Tamil Nadu, India

    Dhritiman Gupta

  2. Inorganic and Physical Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore-12, Karnataka, India

    K. Nagesh

  3. Chemistry and Physics of Materials Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore-64, Karnataka, India

    K. S. Narayan

  4. Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Powai, Mumbai-76, Maharashtra, India

    Dinesh Kabra

Authors
  1. Dhritiman Gupta
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  2. K. Nagesh
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  3. K. S. Narayan
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  4. Dinesh Kabra
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dhritiman Gupta.

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Supporting Information

Chemical Structure of Segmented MEHPPV-X and CNPPV, Photoluminescence and absorption spectra of Segmented MEHPPV, Schematic diagram of the ternary blend morphology and proposed near ideal blend morphology, Schematic depiction of collapsing of HC polymer chain upon non-solvent treatment, Scanning photocurrent microscopy setup. A representative current-voltage characteristics of a ternary blend device without any non-solvent. (DOCX 8568 kb)

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Gupta, D., Nagesh, K., Narayan, K.S. et al. Photocurrent imaging of phase segregation in a ternary polymer blend induced via a non-solvent route. J Polym Res 24, 28 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10965-017-1187-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10965-017-1187-6

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