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A synergistic assembly of nanoscale lamellar photoconductor hybrids

Nature Materials volume 8, pages 68–75 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Highly ordered nanostructured organic/inorganic hybrids offer chemical tunability, novel functionalities and enhanced performance over their individual components. Hybrids of complementary p-type organic and n-type inorganic components have attracted interest in optoelectronics, where high-efficiency devices with minimal cost are desired. We demonstrate here self-assembly of a lamellar hybrid containing periodic and alternating 1-nm-thick sheets of polycrystalline ZnO separated by 2–3 nm layers of conjugated molecules, directly onto an electrode. Initially the electrodeposited inorganic is Zn(OH)2, but π–π interactions among conjugated molecules stabilize synergistically the periodic nanostructure as it converts to ZnO at 150 ∘C. As photoconductors, normalized detectivities (D*) greater than 2×1010 Jones, photocurrent gains of 120 at 1.2 V μm−1 and dynamic ranges greater than 60 dB are observed on selective excitation of the organic. These are among the highest values measured for organic, hybrid and amorphous silicon, making them technologically competitive as low-power, wavelength-tunable, flexible and environmentally benign photoconductors.

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Figure 1: Morphology of lamellar hybrid nanostructure.
Figure 2: Identity of inorganic phase and effect of annealing.
Figure 3: Optoelectronic properties of hybrid PyBA nanostructures.
Figure 4: Structure and photoconducting properties of resulting nanostructures using 5TmDCA.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US Department of Energy under Award DE-FG02-00ER54810 and the National Science Foundation under award DMR 0605427. Experiments made use of the following facilities at Northwestern University: J. B. Cohen X-ray Diffraction Facility, IMSERC, the EPIC and Keck-II Facilities of the NUANCE Center, the Keck Biophysics Facility and the Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine. The NUANCE Center is supported by the NSF-NSEC, NSF-MRSEC, Keck Foundation, the State of Illinois and Northwestern University. We acknowledge facilities support by the Materials Research Center through NSF-MRSEC grant DMR-0520513. XAS measurements were carried out at the DuPont–Northwestern–Dow Collaborative Access Team (DND-CAT) Synchrotron Research Center located at Sector 5 of the Advanced Photon Source. DND-CAT is supported by the E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., The Dow Chemical Company, the US National Science Foundation through Grant DMR-9304725 and the State of Illinois through the Department of Commerce and the Board of Higher Education Grant IBHE HECA NWU 96. Use of the Advanced Photon Source was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. W-31-109-Eng-38. We also thank L. Palmer for useful discussions.

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Author notes

  1. Marina Sofos and Joshua Goldberger: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA

    Marina Sofos, Jonathan E. Allen, David J. Herman, Lincoln J. Lauhon & Samuel I. Stupp

  2. Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA

    Joshua Goldberger, David A. Stone, Wei-Wen Tsai & Samuel I. Stupp

  3. DND-CAT, Northwestern University Synchrotron Research Center, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA

    Qing Ma

  4. Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA

    Samuel I. Stupp

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  1. Marina Sofos
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Correspondence to Samuel I. Stupp.

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Sofos, M., Goldberger, J., Stone, D. et al. A synergistic assembly of nanoscale lamellar photoconductor hybrids. Nature Mater 8, 68–75 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2336

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