53. Controlled Growth of Well-Defined Conjugated Polymers from the Surfaces of Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes: Photoresponse Enhancement via Charge Separation
writer：W. Hou, Y. Wu, Y. Weng, C. Cheng, X. Xu, Y. Li, J.-P. Zhang, Y. Huang, C. W. Bielawski, J. Geng,*
keywords：Carbon nanotubes, Poly(3-Hexylthiophene), Surface-initiated kumada catalyst-transfer polycondensation, Photoresponse, Charge separation
source：期刊
specific source：ACS Nano 2016, 10, 5189–5198
Issue time：2016年
The installation of heterojunctions on the surfaces of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is an effective method for promoting the charge separation processes needed for CNT-based electronics and optoelectronics applications. Conjugated polymers are proven state-of-the-art candidates for modifying thesurfaces of CNTs. However, all previous attempts to incorporate conjugated polymers to CNTs resulted in unordered interfaces. Herein we show that well-defined chains of regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) were successfully grown from the surfaces of multiwalled CNTs (MWNTs) using surface-initiated Kumada catalyst-transfer polycondensation. The polymerization was found to proceed in a controlled manner as chains of tunable lengths were prepared through variation of the initial monomer-to-initiator ratio. Moreover, it was determined that large-diameter MWNTs afforded highly ordered P3HT aggregates, which exhibited a markedly bathochromically shifted optical absorption due to a high grafting density induced planarization of the polymer chains. Using ultrafast spectroscopy, the heterojunctions formed between the MWNTs and P3HT were shown to effectively overcome thebinding energy of excitons, leading to photoinduced electron transfer from P3HT to MWNTs. Finally, when used as prototype devices, the individual MWNT-g-P3HT core-shell structures exhibited excellent photoresponses under a low illumination density.