“Jacketing” Effect Liquid Crystalline Polymer with Perylenediimide as Side Chain: Synthesis, Liquid Crystalline Phase, and Photovoltaic Performances

All polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) is one of the important emerging renewable energy technologies. In this work, we use “jacketing” effect liquid crystalline polymer (LCP) with perylenediimide as side chain to fabricate all-PSCs. First, poly­(2,5-bis­{[6-(4-alkoxy-4′-perylenediimide)-6-hexyl]­oxycarbonyl}­styrene) (abbreviated as PPDCS) is successfully synthesized via chain polymerization. The resultant polymer PPDCS forms stable smectic C (SmC) structure until decomposition. The electrochemical experiment indicates PPDCS shows deep LUMO energy level of −3.81 eV, thus, the nonconjugated PPDCS can be employed as acceptor materials to build all-PSCs. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) experiments show that the PBT7/PPDCS blend film forms a bicontinuous network-domains and the resultant film shows extensive absorption spectrum (300–800 nm) on UV–vis spectra. All-PSCs device fabricated by PTB7/PPDCS presents the best power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 1.23% after optimization, where the short-circuit current density (<i>J</i>_sc) is 4.34 mA cm^–2, an open-circuit voltage (<i>V</i>_oc) is 0.65 V, and a fill factor (FF) is 0.37. This work suggests that the nonconjugated LCP shows potential application for solar cell

Alignment Control of Nematic Liquid Crystal using Gold Nanoparticles Grafted by the Liquid Crystalline Polymer with Azobenzene Mesogens as the Side Chains

The gold nanoparticles highly grafted by a liquid crystalline polymer (LCP) with azobenzene mesogens as the side chain (denoted as Au@TE-PAzo NPs) are successfully designed and synthesized by the two-phase Brust–Schiffrin method. The chemical structures of the monomer and polymer ligands have been confirmed by nuclear magnetic resonance, and the molecular weight of the polymer is determined by gel permeation chromatography. The combined analysis of transmission electron microscopy and thermogravimetric analysis shows that the size of the nanoparticles is 2.5(±0.4) nm and the content of the gold in the Au@TE-PAzo NPs is ca. 17.58%. The resultant Au@TE-PAzo NPs can well disperse in the nematic LC of 5CB. The well-dispersed mixture with appropriate doping concentrations can automatically form a perfect homeotropic alignment in the LC cell. The homeotropic alignment is attributed to the brush formed by Au@TE-PAzo NPs on the substrate, wherein the Au@TE-PAzo NPs gradually diffuse onto the substrate from the mixture. On the contrary, the pure side chain LCPs cannot yield vertical alignment of 5CB, which indicates that the alignment of 5CB is ascribed to the synergistic interaction of the nanoparticles and the grafted LCPs. Moreover, Au@TE-PAzo NPs show excellent film-forming property on account of their periphery of high densely grafted LCPs, which can form uniform thin film by spin-coating. The resultant thin film also can prompt the automatical vertical alignment of the nematic 5CB. Further, upon alternative irradiation of UV and visible light, the alignment of 5CB reversibly switches between vertical and random orientation because of the trans–cis photoisomerization of the azobenzene group on the periphery of Au@TE-PAzo NPs. These experimental results suggest that this kind of nanoparticles can be potentially applied in constructing the remote-controllable optical devices