Logo image
Chemical vapor deposition synthesis of tunable unsubstituted polythiophene
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Chemical vapor deposition synthesis of tunable unsubstituted polythiophene

Siamak Nejati and Kenneth K S Lau
Langmuir, v 27(24), pp 15223-15229
20 Dec 2011
PMID: 22047472

Abstract

Despite having exceptional electroactive properties, applications of unsubstituted polythiophene (PTh) have been limited due to its insolubility. To overcome this challenge, we have employed oxidative chemical vapor deposition (oCVD) as a unique liquid-free technique to enable the oxidative polymerization of PTh using thiophene as the starting monomer and vanadium oxytrichloride as an effective vaporizable oxidant initiator. Vibrational and phototelectron spectroscopy indicated the formation of unsubstituted polythiophene. Cyclic voltammetry revealed its electrochromic behavior in solution. Significantly, polymer conjugation length and electrical conductivity can be tuned by controlling oCVD process variables. Polymerization is found to be adsorption-limited, so by providing sufficient monomer and limiting the amount of initiator at the growth surface, PTh is believed to be formed through α-α thiophene linkages.

Metrics

19 Record Views
55 citations in Scopus

Details

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Web of Science research areas
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Chemistry, Physical
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Logo image