Abstract
In this article, we demonstrate the surface effect and optoelectronic properties of holmium (Ho3+)-doped ZnO in P3HT polymer nanocomposite. We incorporated ZnO:Ho3+ (0.5 mol% Ho) nanostructures in the pristine P3HT-conjugated polymer and systematically studied the effect of the nanostructures on the optical characteristics. Detailed UV-Vis spectroscopy analysis revealed enhanced absorption coefficient and optical conductivity in the P3HT-ZnO:Ho3+ film as compared to the pristine P3HT. Moreover, the obtained photoluminescence (PL) results established the improvement of exciton dissociation as a result of ZnO:Ho3+ nanostructures inclusion. The occurrence of PL quenching is the result of enhanced charge transfer due to ZnO:Ho3+ nanostructures in the polymer, whereas energy transfer from ZnO:Ho3+ to P3HT was verified. Overall, the current investigation revealed a systematic tailoring of the optoelectronic properties of pristine P3HT after inclusion of ZnO:Ho3+ nanostructures, thus opening brilliant perspectives for applications in various optoelectronic devices.
Highlights
Organic-inorganic semiconductors are the main focus of tremendous research activities nowadays due to their promising prospective in optoelectronic device applications, related to their wide photophysical potentialities [1, 2]
TEM analysis revealed that the particle diameter of both un-doped and Ho3+-doped ZnO was below 10 nm
The optoelectronic and microstructural properties of P3HT-ZnO:Ho3+ heterostructure film has been successfully investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Vis, PL, and Raman spectroscopy
Summary
Organic-inorganic semiconductors are the main focus of tremendous research activities nowadays due to their promising prospective in optoelectronic device applications, related to their wide photophysical potentialities [1, 2]. There are plenty of works in the literature related to hybrid-based polymer heterostructures containing inorganic nanostructures [3, 12,13,14,15,16,17]. Several research groups which worked on P3HT-ZnO heterostructures devoted their focus on various aspects such as power conversion efficiency (PCE) enhancement [7, 18], morphology, structural properties, exciton generation, thermal properties, photoexcitation, and charge dynamic [19,20,21]. To our best knowledge, there is no report about optical conductivity of P3HT-ZnO:Ho3+ heterostructures in the literature. Owing to its attractive 4f-4f intra-ionic transitions, holmium is expected to tune the optical properties of ZnO
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