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Synthesis of Conducting Polymer-Metal Nanoparticle Hybrids Exploiting RAFT Polymerization.


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Type

Article

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Authors

Williams, Paul E 
Jones, Samuel T 
Walsh, Zarah 
Appel, Eric A 
Abo-Hamed, Enass K 

Abstract

The direct covalent attachment of conducting polymers (CP) to nanoparticles (NP) to form CP-NP nanohybrids is of great interest for optoelectronic device applications. Hybrids formed by covalently anchoring CP to NP, rather than traditional blending or bilayer approaches, is highly desirable. CP-NP nanohybrids have increased interfacial surface area between the two components, facilitating rapid exciton diffusion at the p-n heterojunction. These materials take advantage of the facile solution processability, lightweight characteristics, flexibility, and mechanical strength associated with CPs, and the broad spectral absorption, photostability, and high charge carrier mobility of NPs. We demonstrate the ability to polymerize a hole transporting (HT) polymer utilizing reversible-addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization and its subsequent rapid aminolysis to yield a thiol-terminated HT polymer. Subsequent facile attachment to gold (Au) and silver (Ag) NPs and cadmium selenide (CdSe) quantum dots (QDs), to form a number of CP-NP systems is demonstrated and characterized. CP-NP nanohybrids show broad spectral absorptions ranging from UV through visible to the near IR, and their facile synthesis and purification could allow for large scale industrial applications.

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Keywords

3403 Macromolecular and Materials Chemistry, 34 Chemical Sciences, Nanotechnology, Bioengineering

Journal Title

ACS Macro Lett

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2161-1653
2161-1653

Volume Title

4

Publisher

American Chemical Society (ACS)
Sponsorship
European Research Council (240629)
P.E.W. and S.T.J. contributed equally to this work. E.A.A. thanks Schlumberger for financial support. This work was supported in part by Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), the Walters-Kundert foundation, and an ERC Starting Investigator grant (ASPiRe, 240629).