Liquid crystalline composites toward organic photovoltaic application (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

Liquid crystalline semiconductor is an interesting category of organic electronic materials and also has been extensively studied in terms of Printed Electronics. For the wider diversity in research toward new applications, one can consider how to use a combination of miscibility and phase separation in liquid crystals. Here we report discotic liquid crystals in making a composite of which structural order is controlled in nano-scale toward photovoltaic applications. Discotic columnar LCs were studied on their resultant molecular order and carrier transport properties. Liquid crystals of phthalocyanine and its analogues which exhibit columnar mesomorphism with high carrier mobility (10-1 cm2/Vs) were examined with making binary phase diagrams and the correlation to carrier transport properties by TOF measurements was discussed. The shape-analogues in chemical structure shows a good miscibility even for the different lattice-type of columnar arrangement and the carrier mobility is mostly decrease except for a case of combination with a metal-free and the metal complex. For the mixtures with non-mesogenic C60 derivatives, one sees a phase-separated structure due to its immiscibility, though the columnar order is remained in a range of component ratio.Especially, in a range of the ratio, it was observed the phase separated C60 derivatives are fused into the matrix of columnar bundles, indicating C60 derivatives could be diffused in columnar arrays in molecular level.