Abstract
Nanoimprinting lithography (NIL) is investigated as a promising method to define nanostructure; however, finding a practical method to achieve large area patterning of conjugated polymer remains a challenge. We demonstrate here that a simple and cost-effective technique is proposed to fabricate the nanoimprinted P3HT nanograting by solvent-assisted room temperature NIL (SART-NIL) method with patterned ETFE film as mold. The patterned ETFE template is produced by embossing ETFE film into a patterned silicon master and is used as template to transfer nanogratings during the SART-NIL process. It indicates that highly reproducible and well-controlled P3HT nanograting film is obtained successfully with feature size of nanogratings ranging from 130 to 700 nm, due to the flexibility, stiffness, and low surface energy of ETFE mold. Moreover, the SART-NIL method using ETFE mold is able to fabricate nanogratings but not to induce the change of molecular orientation within conjugated polymer. The conducting ability of P3HT nanograting in the vertical direction is also not damaged after patterning. Finally, we further apply P3HT nanograting for the fabrication of active layer of OBHJ solar cell device, to investigate the morphology role presented by ETFE mold in device performance. The device performance of OBHJ solar cell is preferential to that of PBHJ device obviously.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s11671-016-1481-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Conjugated polymers have been the focus of polymer and material science research in the past decades due to its excellent electricity, magnetic, and optic properties [1, 2]
It is necessary to fabricate the pattern structure of conjugated polymer using patterned ETFE mold and further employ this technique to prepare the ordered bulk heterojunction (OBHJ) solar cell for application, to investigate the morphology role presented by the ETFE mold in device performance
The patterned ETFE template is produced by embossing ETFE film into a patterned silicon master and the SART-nanoimprinting lithography (NIL) method with patterned ETFE mold is employed as a means to fabricate nanoimprinted grating on the surface of P3HT thin film, as shown in Scheme 1
Summary
Conjugated polymers have been the focus of polymer and material science research in the past decades due to its excellent electricity, magnetic, and optic properties [1, 2]. Significant research efforts have been devoted to indicate that it is necessary to pattern the conjugated polymer film in pursuit of improving the performance of organic optoelectronic devices or requiring for special material processing [3]. Among these techniques, nanoimprinting lithography (NIL) is investigated as a promising method to define nanostructures due to its high resolution, effective cost, and simple process [7, 8]. NIL is a typical template patterning method and has shown great potential for shaping functional soft materials into nanostructures. NIL is a cost-effective patterning method because a template can be used repeatedly without losing its reproducibility.
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