Study on effect of supercritical CO₂ on structural ordering and charge transporting property in thiophene-based block copolymer

Abstract

We reported that supercritical (sc) annealing of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT), and its block copolymers with poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) and polystyrene (PSt) brought about improvements in the crystal structure and hole mobility, determined by the space charge limited current (SCLC) measurement. P3HT-b-PEO showed the largest increase in mobility. From XRD profile, it was found that the treatment with scCO2 increased the crystallite size and crystallinity. UV-vis spectra showed that the effective conjugation length in the scCO2 treated films was increased compared to the as-spun, suggesting that CO2 molecules are incorporated into domains of the second block domains and P3HT amorphous region, and assist to alter the characteristics of the crystalline region. Then, it was considered that the change in the crystalline structure and the improvement of P3HT chains packing led to the enhanced mobility. Since PEO is known to have a higher affinity for CO2, the increase of mobility was specifically intensive.